


The Eternal and Unseen

by profdanglais



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Magic, Captain Swan Supernatural Summer 2020 (Once Upon a Time), F/M, Magical Swords, Witchcraft, You get the idea, and a sword, clueless David, guardian!Killian, magical plants, there is much magic, witch!emma, witches and werewolves and fae oh my
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:27:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25650595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profdanglais/pseuds/profdanglais
Summary: Misthaven University is an ancient place, and as all ancient places do it guards some secrets. Secrets such as Emma Swan and Killian Jones, a fae princess and her royal guardian, whose true identities are well concealed behind the guise of average college students—if not quite well enough to foil the plot their enemies have hatched against them. Now their friends will have to come together, putting their own differences aside to battle an enemy that threatens them all—fae and vampire and werewolf together… plus one very baffled human named David.For the Captain Swan Supernatural Summer.
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 64
Kudos: 208
Collections: Captain Swan Supernatural Summer 2020





	1. Chapter 1

David Nolan was always surprised by people’s reactions when they learned he was the Resident Assistant for H.C. Andersen Hall at Misthaven University. Sure, it was the oldest dorm on the campus, built of dark stone in a high Gothic style, with tall towers and pointed arches, way back when Misthaven and her people still believed in magic. And sure, the heavy wooden doors had a way of creaking on their iron hinges and the windows rattled in their frames when the wind was high... sometimes even when it didn’t blow at all. But this was merely rust and weather and David was a practical man, not one to be troubled by such things as can be plausibly explained away.

And yes, Andersen did have that _reputation_ , though David was certain it could be no more than simple silly student gossip. As an upperclassmen dorm its occupancy was by request only, and over the years it had come to be known as the place where some of the more… _unique_ students tended to convene. But that was surely no reason for people to give that startled twitch or to take a wary step back from him when he told them about his job. Or for the other candidates to look so relieved when they learned it was he and not they who’d be taking over from the last RA, a guy called Walsh who had, in the words of one, “Still not recovered from the trau—er, the _experience_. But hey, good luck, man.”

A thousand years ago when it was known by another name, Andersen alone had _been_ the university, a haven for scholars of every kith and creed and a place where learning took precedence over any rivalry, however ancient. The building had both schooled and housed them, fed them in its great dining hall with food cooked in the basement kitchen, tutored them in the tower classrooms with books procured from the vast library. When lessons were completed the scholars found repose in the common room, a comfortable space with an enormous fireplace, large, overstuffed chairs, and carved wooden tables where lively debates were had each night until the fire died and they withdrew to their rooms to sleep. (Rooms which, David observed to his delight, were twice the size of those in the other dorms and always single occupancy—no roommate squabbles for him to contend with.) As the university grew and newer dorms were built, as the ancient covenants were forgotten and magic faded from the land, fewer and fewer students chose to reside in the newly christened Andersen Hall. At present there were only eight, plus David, who despite the strange reactions he encountered was thrilled to be the RA there. Eight residents, and all upperclassmen, he thought to himself. Andersen had to be the easiest gig on campus. How odd that no one else had seemed to want it. 

The hall itself stood just at the edge of the modern campus, tucked against the so-called _enchanted_ forest that marked the border of Misthaven on three sides. It was an ancient forest, whether enchanted or not—a forest of twisted trees and clinging moss and the shrouding mist that gave their country its name. Very little sunlight survived to reach its floor and thus such things as grew there fed on decay, most digging their roots deep into the soil to wrench what nutrients they could from it and barely peeking the tips of their grey-green leaves above the ground. Other valiant species reached out for whatever light could penetrate the dense canopy, stretching upward into vines that curled around the trunks and branches of the gnarled trees to unfurl their broad leaves hopefully as close as they could to the sky. And so it was of course these very leaves and vines and branches that crept up Andersen’s stone walls and scraped against its windows, and cast deep and shifting shadows that fell both outside the hall and in. 

So yeah, David reflected, Andersen Hall was old. And dark. And with each successive year it sank a bit more deeply into the forest’s embrace—a perfectly benign embrace, most of the time, although perhaps not ideal when you found yourself alone in your dorm with the music in your headphones never quite as loud as the branches across your windows, or the distant howls of wolves, or the much less distant scrabblings of other creatures to which it was not always wise to put a name. So, yeah, there was that. 

And the students who chose to live in Andersen were characters, that was for sure. Even David had to admit that he’d never met anyone _quite_ like them before. But, he reminded himself, at the end of the day they were just students. Just kids like all the others, despite the sometimes unnerving focus of their attention and the surprising depth to their eyes. Just college kids discovering themselves, exploring their quirks and hobbies and interests. 

Take Emma, for example. Emma Swan, as graceful as her name implied and even more beautiful, with her warm smile and wry humour and the spark of mischief in her green eyes. One of the nicest girls David had ever met, tough and smart but with a kind and generous heart and a tender vulnerability that made him wish it were still fashionable to slay dragons. He’d gladly slay one for her—or anything else that might threaten her. His urge to _protect Emma_ at all costs—though from what dangers it was never quite clear—surprised him with its persistent and overwhelming strength. 

Also surprising was Emma’s choice of dorm-room decor; the space in her room not occupied by the bed, desk, television, and mini-fridge that were standard even in Andersen rooms, she had filled entirely with plants. Plants the like of which David was certain he had never before seen, long and twisted vines that clung and crept across the stone walls, broad leaves and pointed ones and flowers in unexpected colours. He’d examined them with a frown the day she moved in, mildly unnerved by how comfortably they already seemed to inhabit the space but convinced by Emma’s soothing reassurances and the evidence of his own eyes that none of them were anything college kids might wish to dry and smoke. And while keeping what was essentially a greenhouse in a dorm room may be a bit unorthodox it wasn’t _strictly_ against the rules—David had even made a special visit to the Chancellor to ensure Emma wouldn’t run into any difficulty later on, if another student made a complaint, for example. The Chancellor’s eyes had widened to an alarming size, but he’d confirmed that yes, students were allowed plants in their rooms, and there wasn’t technically a limit on their number, then hustled David from his office with the rather thin excuse of a dentist appointment he suddenly remembered he had.

And as for Emma’s habit of chatting to her plants as though they understood her words, or chuckling to herself as she did so, or singing as she watered them—a low and haunting tune in a language David felt he really ought to recognise—all while wearing a pointed hat made of green straw with flowers round the brim which she called her ‘special gardening hat’… well, she wasn’t bothering anyone and David really didn’t think it was his place to judge. 

And actually, Emma’s plants weren’t even the most unusual things that could be found in the rooms of his residents. Victor Whale, a slender, pale young man who gave the impression of feeding off his own nervous energy, had what looked to David’s admittedly untrained eye like an entire laboratory set up in his room—tall shelves lined with specimen jars and long tables loaded with Bunsen burners under simmering beakers of… substances in which David felt it might be wisest not to invest too much careful thought. He had _not_ spoken to the Chancellor about those burners and didn’t intend to, both because he didn’t wish to draw attention to them and because Victor with his wild hair and wilder eyes, the sardonic smirk he nearly always wore and the barbed comments he loved to make, did not rouse _quite_ the same protective instincts in David as Emma did. 

That, and he wasn’t entirely certain the Chancellor would agree to meet with him again. 

Of all his residents, the one David felt he could relate to most was Graham. They shared a similar taste for plaid shirts and brown leather jackets, and a similar appreciation for the simple joys that could be had in the great outdoors. Graham had an deep, instinctual understanding of nature that David envied; several times he’d caught the younger man in conversation with the dogs he met on the walks he liked to take or the squirrels who paused to chatter at him from the branches of trees, even the deer and other creatures that crept out from the forest to scratch at his window, serious conversation that did not appear one-sided. Graham spoke to animals as Emma did to plants—in the manner of folk to their brethren—but the connection went deeper even than that. Every few weeks he went out to spend all night in the woods, generally, David couldn’t help noticing, around the time of the full moon—and when David inquired why Graham simply replied “The animals need me.” 

If animals of the furry variety had need of Graham, the feathered kind flocked, quite literally, to Snow. There never seemed to be a time when she wasn't accompanied by some feathered friend or other, and her dorm window was always open so they could come and go as they pleased. She kept bowls of seeds on her shelves and handfuls of them in her pockets and had been delighted when Emma gave her a tree so the birds would have somewhere in her room to nest—a tree that within a week had overgrown its pot and sunk roots into the stone floor of Snow’s room in a way David again found himself opting not to examine. He himself passed many a pleasant afternoon with Snow in that room, listening to her talk about—and to—her birds. It amazed him now how little attention he’d paid to birds before. They were astounding, beautiful creatures, and the sound of Snow’s voice, melodic and soothing as she stroked their feathered heads, was… well, it was… it was something he sometimes felt he could listen to forever. 

Snow’s best friend in the dorm was Ruby and though David liked Ruby perfectly well he had to admit he was a bit baffled by how close the two were. They didn’t seem to have a whole lot in common. All but the bravest of Snow’s birds fled when Ruby approached, and the ones that stayed eyed her warily and stuck close to Snow as she flashed them a grin and licked her chops. Er, her lips. She licked her _lips_ and it made the birds nervous, and… and at any rate, Ruby was bold and charming but just a bit wild. She liked to party and to stay out late, often not returning to her room until the early hours of the morning. Andersen had no curfew so David said nothing, though he couldn’t help noticing that in sharp contrast to Ruby’s habits Snow was usually in bed by 10 o’clock. Not that he paid her or her sleeping habits any _particular_ attention, certainly not, just that he happened to notice she always left her room at around 9.45 to go wash her face, always wearing such cute pajamas and trailed by a flock of bluebirds—and it wasn’t like he made a _point_ of being out in the common room when he knew she’d be walking by, he just… well, he happened to be there sometimes. That was all. 

Yet despite these differences Snow and Ruby were the best of friends, and while Emma was more solitary and a bit distant until you got to know her, she also got along well with them. Ruby got along with just about everybody, including Belle, who David sometimes forgot was even among his residents. Belle had an unnerving way of appearing very suddenly where she was least expected and of disappearing without warning from places she’d been moments before. She was a quiet, studious young woman who moved as though her feet didn’t quite touch the floor and was so pale he sometimes fancied he could see through her. She was hardly ever in her room or even the common room, preferring to spend her time in the library. 

“You might say she haunts the place,” August had remarked with a wry note in his voice that David imagined was significant, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. Feeling at something of a loss, he had simply nodded. “She certainly does spend a lot of time there,” he’d agreed, then frowned when August laughed. 

August was a bit of an odd one, the only person in the dorm whom Ruby actively disliked, so much that she actually snarled at him whenever their paths crossed. He took only evening classes and was never anywhere to be found during the day. At least once a week he returned from his classes accompanied by a young woman—always beautiful and rarely the same one twice—and David observed that while August preferred to sleep the day away those women would stumble from his room quite early the next morning and looking awful—pale and drawn and thoroughly exhausted. Before leaving they all would go to Emma’s door, knock three times slowly then three times fast, and when it opened they all smiled the same sheepish smile and stuttered the same apologies as they slipped into her room. When they emerged from it they were as new women—pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, glowing with health and quite pleased with themselves, wreathed in satisfied smiles. 

David felt uncomfortably as though he ought to do something about this, though he had no idea what. The women always seemed so thrilled when they arrived—clinging to August’s arm and chattering brightly as he smiled at them with a peculiar sort of fond disinterest—and so contented when they left, after they’d seen Emma, at least, and as no formal complaints were ever lodged David was left with nothing more to go on than a feeling of vague discomfort. 

He’d attempted to broach the subject once with Emma but she had simply shrugged and said “Groupies. What can you do?” and so he’d let it go. 

So those were his residents. Four women—Emma, Snow, Ruby, and Belle, and four men—Graham, Victor, August… and Killian. 

Ah, yes. Killian. 

David liked Killian, he truly did. It was a point of pride with him to find something to like about every one of his residents, though he had to admit that finding that thing for Killian posed something of a challenge. It wasn’t just that Killian preferred his leather black or opted for dark button-downs or obscure band t-shirts instead of plaid. It wasn’t even that he was mouthy and arrogant, smarter than most everyone he met and not afraid to let them know it. No, the challenge for David when it came to liking Killian was Emma. Or more specifically, the way Killian looked at Emma. And the way she very much looked back. 

“I suppose that’s one way to ‘guard’ her,” Victor remarked one evening as they sat around the fire in the common room, Emma laughing with Graham in one corner while Killian glowered darkly at the pair of them from the other. “Very dramatic, you know. Very Charlotte Brontë. Or is it Emily, I always get them mixed up.” 

“Piss off,” Killian snarled, returning his attention to his textbooks just in time to miss the glance Emma shot him from the corner of her eye. 

“‘Course I suppose she doesn’t make it easy for you—” Victor began, then smirked when Killian slammed his book shut and got up. “I’m going to bed,” he declared and stalked from the room, Emma’s eyes following his every move as he went. 

“Enemies to lovers slow burn, 100k,” Belle whispered to Ruby on another occasion, a rare instance when she left the library to join them for breakfast. Ruby nodded sagely and both of them sat back, observing Emma and Killian’s heated argument about the best way to make a cup of tea with all apparent enjoyment. David wasn’t entirely certain what that meant, or that he liked the way his residents seemed to find the pair’s squabbles so entertaining. He knew only that if Emma and Killian really thought anyone believed they hated each other the way they both so loudly and frequently proclaimed, they were seriously deluding themselves. Their little snarky comments and defiant challenges were some of the most obvious flirtation David had ever seen, especially when combined with those damned looks. Looks that all but screamed how much they would prefer to resolve their differences with physical action than with words, and that they had already imagined how those physical dispute resolutions might go—frequently and in great detail. 

David did _not_ approve of those looks. 

Nor did he approve, as the summer heat faded into the cooler air of autumn and the green leaves of the forest’s trees took on brighter hues, of the way Emma and Killian’s snappish words began to lose the battle with that oh-so-evident longing to touch. Slowly at first and tentatively, small brushes of arms and fingers that before long began to linger… In principle he supposed there was nothing wrong with what they were doing, or with the budding feelings they continued to deny. He would be one hundred percent in support of it, in fact, were it not so damned blatant—those sparks of tension that turned the air electric, the raw hunger in Killian’s eyes as he watched her, the answering ache in hers when she watched him—David had come to think of Emma as he would a little sister and he did not appreciate being slapped in the face, so to speak, by the evidence of her active sexual interest in a man whom David was not at all convinced was good enough for her. It annoyed him so much that he almost— _almost_ —found himself agreeing with Victor, who had taken to rolling his eyes and muttering “I wish they’d just _fuck_ already” a bit too loudly whenever Emma and Killian got into one of their ‘disputes.’ 

He would have been able to _officially_ disapprove the night he caught them doing tequila slammers in her dorm room—alcohol was discouraged in the dorms, even for students of legal drinking age—except that had turned out to be nothing but a very bizarre dream… although… _had_ it been a dream? It must have been, though it had seemed so real at the time… but he remembered only catching sight of them through her slightly open door and reaching up to knock… the next thing he knew he was groaning as he woke in his own room, his head aching and feeling full of cotton wool, Emma sitting by his bedside with her ‘world famous hangover cure’ in one of Victor’s beakers explaining that he was the one who’d overindulged... “So unlike you, David, I’m really very shocked,” she’d said with that glint in her eye… and when David confronted Killian about the incident he’d merely scoffed and said “Tequila, mate? You were definitely dreaming. You know I only drink rum, and that in the company of ladies more… amenable than Swan.” 

Of course, on the late October afternoon when David accompanied Graham on his walk and they stumbled upon Emma and Killian beneath a tree in the forest, wrapped around each other and kissing so deeply that he wondered how they could also be breathing—well, that was most definitely not a dream. It was also not in the dorm and therefore not _technically_ within his jurisdiction, so he simply caught Graham by the arm and turned back the way they came. 

The energy had shifted between Emma and Killian, he realised with a curious sort of bittersweet thrum in his chest. An unmistakable shift yet hard to define, as though they were hovering just on the cusp of something both nebulous and truly extraordinary. And despite them being right out in public—seriously, _right_ off the footpath—the way they’d held each other was so intensely intimate that interrupting them, even to ask them to move to a more appropriate location, would have felt like the worst kind of intrusion. Plus of course there was no telling what uncomfortable circumstances David might find himself waking up in if he dared to cock-block Emma Swan. 

Now where in hell had _that_ thought come from? 

A few hours later Emma and Killian returned to the dorm, flushed and mussed and with leaves in their hair, buzzing with that newly shifted energy—and holding hands, though they let go both reluctantly and immediately upon realising they were being eagerly observed. 

“Well well well,” smirked Victor, elbowing David in the ribs. “Looks like August owes me twenty. I should probably thank you, Jones.” 

“Bugger off, mate,” muttered Killian, entirely without his usual snarl, and then with a defiant glare and a flush high on his cheekbones, he sauntered after Emma into her room and shut the door firmly behind him.

“Well, I think I’ll go put on some _very_ loud music,” Victor remarked, and retreated into his own room, leaving David alone in the common room feeling vaguely unsettled. 

The next morning Killian and Emma arrived at breakfast together, radiating happiness and unable to stop touching, and, David would swear to it, with actual stars in their eyes. They left for their morning classes with their arms around each other, returning in the afternoon in the same manner, and when Victor and August tried to mock him about it Killian just laughed. 

“We’ve worked out our differences, mates,” he said, with a waggle of his eyebrows. “I’m certain you know what I mean.” 

“It’s sweet, really,” August observed one evening a week or so later, in that dry, supercilious tone of his that grated on David’s nerves. “Though possibly not the _wisest_ move, sleeping with the woman under his protection. I’ve seen the vows they have to take, you know, and they are _intense_. It could literally be the death of him.” 

“The heart wants what the heart wants,” Ruby snapped, baring her teeth as Snow placed a soothing hand on her arm. “Not that _you_ would know anything about that.” 

“You’re right of course,” August agreed, his eyes flashing red in the firelight. “What would _I_ know about love and loss, I’m only three hundr—”

“Well, I think it’s great they’ve finally gotten together,” said Snow loudly, glaring first at August then Ruby then August again. “I hope they’ll be happy.” 

David hoped so too, genuinely. Even he could see how good the two of them were for each other. She smoothed his rough edges and he drew her out from her shell, and the dangerous sparks of their attraction settled down into the far gentler flame of new love. It _was_ sweet, and he _did_ approve, and yet—still he felt unsettled, a vague sensation of unease twisting deep in his gut. He’d call it a premonition, if he believed in such things. But he was a sensible man, a man of science and the twenty-first century, and so he firmly ignored it. 

Two days later Emma Swan disappeared.

___


	2. Chapter 2

The sunlight shone through the window and right on his face, bright and warm, though not enough of either to wake him up. It was Harriet who managed to rouse him, finally, after several minutes spent stroking his forehead with her fronds and patting his cheek with her leaf. When this produced no effect aside from some incoherent muttering and limp attempts to push her leaf away, the plant rustled with a botanical sigh and gave him a sharp smack upside the head. With her thorns out. 

“Ow!” cried Killian, jerking into abrupt and painful consciousness. “What the bloody hell—Harriet! Lass, I thought we were friends.” 

Harriet smacked him again. 

“Oi, seriously! What—” He broke off as Harriet unfolded her larger leaves from where they had been wrapped around him, cradling his body protectively, and Killian realised he was lying sprawled on the floor of Emma’s dorm room and that his head ached like a son of a bitch. 

“What happened?” he groaned. Harriet’s leaf brushed his face again then caressed the back of his head and Killian followed its path tentatively with his fingers. They encountered a tender, painful lump at the base of his skull and a nasty gash in his scalp, coated in a springy, jelly-like substance that he recognised by its texture and aroma as Harriet’s sap. 

“Harriet... did you heal me?” he asked her. She inclined her leaf in a gracious nod, and Killian felt a lump rise in his throat that could almost rival the one on his head. “Thank you, lass,” he said, stroking the edge of her frond with his fingertip as Emma had taught him. “I’m very grateful. But why did you need to? What happened here?” 

Harriet tapped him on his temple, gently but with a clear rebuke. “Aye, I’m _trying_ to remember,” he replied wryly. “But cut a man a bit of slack, would you, when he’s been thoroughly coshed and spent the night on a cold stone floor.” 

Harriet shrugged and Killian pressed his fingers to his eyes, willing his brain to kick into some kind of gear. “I remember going to the pub last night with Emma,” he said slowly. “We had a few drinks and we wanted food, but the pub kitchen had closed so we came back here... we were going to order pizza but then there was a knock on the door... I went to answer it, and she joked that maybe the pizza place had read our minds… I turned to look at her as I opened the door, and then… then… oh, _bloody_ hell.” 

His eyes had been scanning the room as he spoke, taking in the upended chair and the books fallen from their shelves, the overturned plant pots and shattered glass vials. But this chaos, though alarming, was not what caught his attention. 

Beside the door, half-buried beneath spilled soil and shards of glass, lay an object. A small, purple object, roughly round and attached to a long and slender strip of leather. An object that Killian had last seen glowing faintly against Emma’s pale skin as he’d trailed kisses down her belly. 

With a choking cry he scrambled on his hands and knees across the room and picked it up. The power within it hummed through him, and agonising terror sank its claws deep into his chest. 

“Bloody hell, Emma,” he whispered. 

~

David was lingering over his coffee with a gentle smile on his face, listening to the bright sound of Snow and Ruby’s voices as they chatted over breakfast. Snow’s voice in particular with its sweet tones soothed him as much as it did her birds. If he could start every day like this, David thought, watching as the bird on her shoulder hopped down her arm to peck at the pile of seeds she’d left next to her plate—with good coffee and Snow’s voice and the occasional trill of birdsong... well, he wouldn’t hate it. 

That thought had barely even crept into his mind when the door to the dining hall burst open and Killian appeared, one hand pressed against his head and the other clenched in a tight fist. He took two steps forward then stumbled, groaning, swaying precariously on feet that seemed reluctant to hold him up. Coffee sloshed over David’s hand as he moved to stand but Ruby and Graham were far quicker, darting forward with inhuman speed and managing, barely, to catch Killian before he collapsed to the floor. 

“What happened to you?” cried Ruby, as she and Graham took Killian by the arms and helped him into a chair. 

“Emma,” Killian gasped. “Emma.”

“She’s not here—” Ruby began, but Killian shook his head. 

“Gone,” he whispered. 

“What?” 

Killian closed his eyes and appeared to marshal his strength, and when he opened them again they were frantic. “Emma’s gone,” he said, in a far stronger voice. “Taken.” 

The room went utterly still and utterly, utterly silent.

That vague sense of unease, of foreboding, that had been simmering in David’s gut for weeks flared now into a full and rolling boil. He set his coffee cup down on the table with a thunk and glared at Killian. “What do you mean she’s been _taken?_ ” he demanded. 

“More importantly,” said Snow, her voice barely audible and her eyes wide with fear. “ _Who took her?_ ”

Killian’s expression darkened and his closed fist clenched tighter. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never saw their face.” 

The eerie silence shattered as everyone began to talk at once. 

“But that’s impossi—” 

“No one could just—” 

“—even with magic!”

“How could someone just _take_ her?” Graham’s voice rose over the din. “How did they get past _you?_ ” 

As quickly as they rose up the voices fell silent again, awaiting Killian’s reply. 

Killian’s expression went, impossibly thought David, darker still. “They coshed me,” he snarled. 

“They _what?_ ” David demanded.

“Hit me on the head with something hard, a stick or a bat or—hell, it could have been a frying pan, I don’t bloody know.” 

The silence in the room took on a baffled quality as Killian’s glare was met with a wall of blank and uncomprehending stares. 

“And that… worked?” ventured Ruby. 

“Of course it worked!” Killian snapped. “I’m immune to magic, not blunt objects.”

Victor’s face wore an expression that David recognised as one he often had himself, whenever he tried to do math in his head. “But they just—” he gave his hand a vague wave. “ _Hit_ you?” 

Killian shot him a mocking look. “Yes, they ‘just hit me,’” he sneered. “It was a more than adequate measure, I assure you.” 

Snow placed a steaming cup of tea in front of him and Killian’s sneer faded to pained gratitude. “Thanks, love,” he murmured, and took a long sip before turning back to Victor. “It’s a human strategy, yes, but you have to admit an elegantly simple one. You lot would have tied yourselves in knots trying to work out a way to defeat me by magic, they just whacked me upside the head. I’d admire it if it weren’t so bloody painful.” 

“Emma gave me a jar of headache powder a while back, let me go get you some,” said Ruby sympathetically and Killian once again nodded his gratitude. 

“Thank you, lass, I’d appreciate it.” 

As Ruby hurried out the door Graham looked at David, his brow furrowed. David was by this point mightily confused and so full of questions they tumbled over each other in his brain. Before he could even begin to sort through them, Graham spoke.

“So whoever took Emma was human,” he mused. David frowned, surprised to hear his friend wasting time with such a remark. Of course they were human. What else would they be?

He fully expected to hear another mocking reply, but Killian simply nodded. “Aye,” he said. “One of them, at least.” 

Graham’s expression sharpened. “There were more than one?” 

“There had to have been.” Killian’s clenched fist trembled as he pressed it against the tabletop, his knuckles stark white. “No single human could have taken Emma, not alone. Not from her own bloody room. There are distinct signs of a struggle—it’s pretty clear both she and the plants fought back.” His mouth pressed into a grim line. “I don’t know what we’re dealing with here but it’s big,” he said hoarsely. “And what’s more, Emma knew it was big.” 

“How do you know that?” asked Graham.

“She left this.” 

Killian wrenched his fist open to reveal a stone, a deep purple stone with a shimmering glow that seemed to hover over his palm. It was roughly round, as though carved hastily by hand, with a small hole hewn through it slightly off-centre, threaded with a leather cord. It looked to David’s eyes thoroughly unremarkable aside from that unsettling glow, the sort of pendant you find on a three-for-one sale in a shop that also sells patchouli candles and things woven out of hemp. 

“What is it?” he asked, but his words were drowned out by the collective gasp from the others.

“Is that what I think it is?” Victor’s voice held genuine fear. 

“So _Emma_ has it,” Snow breathed in awe. 

“She did,” Killian replied grimly. “She wore it around her neck. She never took it off, and I mean _never,_ not for anything. Until now.” 

“But what does that mean?”

Victor’s whispered question was drowned out by the sound of the door opening. Ruby strode through it, trailed by a rumpled and sleepy August. 

“Hey guys. I woke August up and filled him in,” Ruby said casually, as though August wasn’t the one person in the dorm she actively avoided and never spoke to except in anger. She strolled over to Killian and held out a small paper packet. “Here’s your powde— _fuck me sideways._ ” Her eyes went wide and the packet fell from her nerveless fingers. “Is that—” 

“Aye,” said Killian, “it is.” He picked up the packet and tore it open, tipped the contents onto his tongue and chased it with a swallow of tea. 

_It’s_ what _, damn it?_ David’s brain screamed, but his mouth refused to form the words. 

“So _Emma_ has it,” August echoed Snow’s words but in a very different tone of voice, his expression now sharp and alert. “I should have guessed. Sky tribe, of fucking course.” 

“And just what is _that_ supposed to mean?” Ruby snapped, rounding on August with her teeth bared. 

“Ruby, now is _not_ the time,” said Snow sharply, as Graham leapt to his feet and took Ruby’s arm. 

“It’s not the time,” Killian agreed. He stood as well and fixed them all with a steady gaze. The haze of pain had cleared from his eyes, David noted, and he seemed much steadier on his feet.

“You all know what this is,” he said, holding up the purple stone. “You know its significance and the vital importance of keeping it safe. And yet Emma, the woman tasked _by her birthright_ with its protection, deliberately left it behind.” He paused to let his words sink in. Even David could feel the solemn weight of them settling into his bones. “She would not do such a thing,” Killian continued, “unless she thought that leaving it behind was safer than risking it falling into the hands of whoever took her. She would not do such a thing unless she trusted us to keep it safe. She did it because she knew it was the one thing guaranteed to make us understand that the danger she’s in is _serious_.” 

The air in the room felt heavy as lead, holding them still and silent within the moment. It pressed on David’s shoulders and on his chest, holding him frozen until after an interminable moment Snow spoke. “So… what are we going to do?”

A smile spread across Killian’s face, a sharp and dangerous one. His eyebrow quirked. “We’re going to rescue her, of course.”

“Oh, well,” mocked Victor, “of _course_.” 

Killian’s smile faded. “Listen to me, all of you,” he said firmly. “I know that we have our differences and I know how deep they run. But you _all_ understand the enormity of this and how it affects every _single_ one of us. We have have no choice but to act, and act now. Fast and united, before it’s too late.” 

He scanned their faces, making eye contact with each in turn. “Are you with me?” he asked. 

His answer came from the last source any of them expected. “You can,” said August, “and I think I speak for all of us when I say that.” Snow, Ruby, and Graham all nodded in agreement then turned expectantly to Victor, who rolled his eyes and heaved a sigh. 

“Fine,” he said. “What do you need us to do?”

~

“They’ll take her to the forest,” said Snow.

“Do you think so?” Ruby frowned. “That’s seriously risky.” 

“So is hauling her across the campus,” Graham pointed out. “Even if they managed to restrain her, there’s no way to move a body without looking suspicious.” 

Graham sounded like he was speaking from experience, which was surely impossible—or so David would have said half an hour ago. His definition of ‘impossible’ had shifted pretty dramatically since then and he was no longer certain anything could be ruled out.

“I agree with Snow, they’d go to the forest,” Graham continued. “Remember we’re dealing with at least one human, they might not know what the forest is to Emma.” 

“Hmm, that’s a point,” Ruby agreed. She turned to Killian. “Okay, we three will go to the forest and see what we can find there. Can you give us an hour?” 

Killian nodded. “That should be enough. Keep your phones on. And be careful.” 

Ruby’s smile flashed. “Always am.” 

“Killian,” David croaked, finding his voice with effort as he watched Snow follow Ruby and Graham from the room, bluebirds hovering worriedly around her head. His mind was still churning and he stumbled over his words. “What—what exactly is—what are they—why are you—why are you all talking about humans like you aren’t… one?”

Killian regarded him with a curious blend of exasperation and empathy. “Because we’re not,” he said bluntly. “Well, _they’re_ not.” He waved his hand at Victor and at August, who gave David a small bow. “I am, more or less.” 

“Is this some kind of joke?” David asked faintly. Victor snorted and Killian sighed, running a hand over his face. 

“David, look, mate, we tried our best to ease you into this and let you figure things out on your own,” he said, “but honestly I’ve never seen _anyone_ fail to pick up on hints as comprehensively as you can.” 

“What—” David rubbed his throbbing temples. “What does that _mean?_ ” 

Killian turned to Victor. “We’re going to need something to open his mind,” he said. “There must be some magic that’s keeping it closed, I have a hard time believing even he can be this clueless. Have you got some sort of potion or something that might work to soften him up a bit?”

Victor scowled. “I don’t do potions.” 

“What the bloody hell do you always have on those damned burners, then, or are you just making the whole floor smell terrible for your own entertainment?” 

“Those are _experiments_.”

“And you can’t experiment with potion making?”

“I do sometimes, but Emma’s really the potion expert. If I need one I usually just get it from her.” 

“Well, Emma’s not bloody here, is she?” Killian hissed through gritted teeth. “What have _you_ got?” 

“Um, well, I mean, not much for opening _minds_ ,” stuttered Victor, recoiling from Killian’s glare. “Heads I can open. Minds are trickier.” 

“I’ll open _your_ head in a minute—”

“I can do it.” 

Killian and Victor turned in unison to stare at August, who was lounging against the door frame, casual and nonchalant. “Influence him, I mean,” he drawled, in a careless tone that sent a shiver up David’s spine, like tiny spiders dancing down the back of his neck.

“Um,” said Victor, with a frantic glance at Killian.

“Not too much, of course,” continued August, soothingly. “Just _crack_ him open a bit, you know, make him… receptive to your input.” 

Killian looked at David, with a look that sent the spiders scattering all across his skin. “That…that could work, actually.”

“Seriously, Jones?” cried Victor.

“Look, we can only use the resources we’ve got and if you can’t produce a potion we have to come up with something else,” Killian snapped. “Can you produce a potion?” 

“I already said no!” 

“Well then. These are the resources we’ve got.” 

“And just how are you going to give him this ‘input’ once he is ‘made receptive’ to it?” Victor sneered. 

“If I’m right about him I won’t need to,” said Killian. “It’s already there. All I need to do is trigger it.” His expression turned calculating and David's skin-spiders grew claws. 

“Do I get a say in—” he began, but Killian cut him off. 

“No you don’t,” he said shortly. “We haven’t got the time. Victor, do you suppose you might be able to locate a basic solvent, one able to emulsify plant sap and willow powder? Can you do that, at least?” 

Victor nodded. “That I can do.” 

“Do it, then. And August, you make whatever preparations you need. I’m going to go grab some things from Emma’s room, we’ll meet back here in ten.” 

“Killian,” David tried again, “I’m really not comfortable—”

Killian rounded on him with a glare, dark and intent and terrifying. “Emma is in danger,” he said, spitting every syllable. “Serious, life threatening danger. I know you can understand that, David, if you understand nothing else, and I know you can’t ignore it. I _know_ you’ve come to care about her.” 

“Of course I have—” 

“Then help me save her.” Killian’s voice broke. “Please.” 

The look in his eyes—raw vulnerability and soul-deep terror bolstered by a core of iron David would never have dreamed he possessed—struck a chord somewhere deep within him and resonated there. For the first time he felt that he was seeing Killian as he truly was, and there in that brief flash of kinship David understood, as surely as he’d ever understood anything, that Killian loved Emma, that he would do anything for her, and that he was deathly afraid his _anything_ would not be enough. 

“All right,” said David, clasping Killian’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze. “Just tell me what you need me to do.” 

~

Ten minutes later David was waiting anxiously in the common room with August sitting in the chair across from him, legs crossed, watching him with a cool stare that did nothing to calm the energetic gyrations of the skin-spiders. When the door opened to admit Killian and Victor he leapt to his feet, desperate for any excuse to escape that unwavering gaze.

“Did you get what you needed?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice steady and disguise his nerves. “I’m ready for... er, whatever.” 

Killian was carrying another paper packet similar to the one Ruby had given him and a small, grey-green leaf. These he set on a table as Victor produced a beaker half-full of a milky substance. Killian tore open the paper packet and tipped its contents—a few ounces of dusty grey powder—into the beaker. He then took the leaf and squeezed it until it began to express thick, clear sap, then dropped that in as well. The liquid in the beaker began to make a faint popping noise and Killian looked satisfied as he picked it up by its narrow neck and held it up to the light. He swirled the liquid in a deliberate manner, first clockwise then counter, then clockwise again, counting under his breath, until it turned a dark, swirling purple and began to smoke—rather ominously, David thought. 

Killian turned to him with a slight smirk and a raised eyebrow. “I hope you mean that _whatever_ ,” he said, holding out the beaker. “Because the first thing I’m going to need you to do is drink this.” 

“Er—” said David. 

“Then look deep into August’s eyes.” 

“Um—” 

David jumped as he realised August was now standing directly behind him, grinning widely, the tip of his fang catching a shaft of bright morning sunlight with a distinctly mocking gleam. He ran the tip of his tongue along it as his eyes flashed red and at least three impossible ideas began to coalesce in David’s brain, coming together to form a conclusion that within his new definition of ‘impossible’ was in fact anything but. 

“How—” David cleared his throat, still unable to quite believe he was entertaining any of this. “How are you out in the sunlight?” he asked. “Aren’t you—doesn’t it—burn you?”

Killian and Victor chuckled and August’s grin widened. “That’s a myth, I’m afraid,” he drawled. “Sunlight doesn’t harm us, we’re just not morning people.” 

“It might be best if you operate from the assumption that everything you think you know is wrong,” said Killian. “Start with a clean slate, so to speak.” 

“My mind is a clean slate,” David echoed faintly.

“Exactly.” Killian smirked at him. “So are you ready?” 

David hesitated. “You’re sure this is necessary to help Emma?” 

“It’s the only way.” 

“All right,” David sighed. “Give me the damned potion.” 

~

_The purple of the potion rises up, engulfs him, dark as smoke, only the red of August’s eyes as shining beacons to guide him. He follows them through the swirls and eddies of the smoke until abruptly it is gone and he is standing in a forest of tall trees reaching straight up to a cloudless sky._

_He hears a noise behind him and turns to see a woman, beautiful and terrifying, wreathed in smiles and swathed in darkness. As he watches she waves a wand of blackened wood and a substance, viscous and dark as tar, begins to bubble up from the ground and ooze from the trees, to drip from the very air itself. It twines around her in glistening ropes, hissing its displeasure, a slave to her whims, and she throws back her head in peals of triumphant laughter._

_“The Black Fairy,” says Killian’s voice in his ear. David spins around but no one is there, and the dark woman takes no notice of him. “I’m not actually there,” says Killian, an edge of impatience now in his tone. “And neither are you. Remember that. What you’re seeing is long in the past, shadows of your history. You can’t touch or change it._ _Just watch.”_

_As the dark substance swirls about her the woman draws it, slowly, into herself, absorbs it. Her eyes turn black, and her hair and her gown; the colour drains from her skin until she is pale as a moonbeam in the night. Her lips curve into a satisfied smile and David, though he is not within his body, shivers._

_The image fades away, replaced by another. A village in flames, the agonised shrieks of people—yes, people, David sees and knows them to be humans like himself—as they try in vain to flee. The cackle of the Black Fairy, appearing in their midst._

_“Surrender,” she hisses. “And your lives will be spared.”_

_“At what cost?” spits a woman, glaring contempt as her children huddle in her skirts. “Our freedom?”_

_“You will give your lives in service to the fae,” says the Black Fairy. “Or you will give them to the flames.”_

_“Burn us then,” says the woman, her chin raised in defiance. “For we will never serve you.”_

_The scene blurs again and resolves into another forest, lush and green. Tall trees surround a large, flat rock in the shape of a circle, around which many beings are gathered. Some have the appearance of humans, others anything but, and still others combine human-like forms with horns or feathers or fur or leathery skin. Some have wings, others tails, all are angry. And scared._

_“We must act!” cries one, slapping the rock with his tail to punctuate his point. “The humans no longer believe she does not speak for all of us! If we do nothing she will wipe them from existence in our names!”_

_“Perhaps we should let her,” retorts another. “These humans breed quickly and their numbers are ever growing. Their settlements already threaten our lands.”_

_“Not threaten,” says a third. “We can live peacefully alongside them, as we have done for centuries.”_

_“Oh yes indeed, when they were but few.”_

_“Their numbers are beside the point!”_

_“Enough!” shouts the first, banging his tail on the rock again. “The qualities_ _of the humans as a species are not germane. We simply cannot allow her to wipe out an entire race of beings. It is unconscionable and a breach of the ancient covenants!”_

_A chorus of agreement rustles through the assembled crowd. The second speaker observes her fellows in silence for a moment, then gives a shrug. “I will stand with you, Elisedd, in accordance with the covenants and for the moral strength of your argument,” she says. “But I wish for my warning to be noted: The human race will be the end of us, if we allow it.”_

_“Your objection is so noted, Eigyr,” says Elisedd with a nod. “Now let it hereby be known that we the Fae Council stand in agreement, and shall act with due haste and taking all necessary measures to stop the Black Fairy in her slaughter of the humans...”_

_The image blurs again and David finds himself in the midst of a raging battlefield. Human warriors stand shoulder-to-shoulder with fae, against the Black Fairy and the army of demons her dark magic called into being. He feels a hum of energy in the air to his left and turns to see a woman who he thinks at first is Emma—the same golden hair with a life of its own, the same deep green eyes. But this woman’s nose and chin are pointed, as are her ears, and her fingernails when she raises her hand in the air are long and sharp as talons. She holds up her hands to the sky and sings out, a haunting tune and words in the language Emma uses when she sings to her plants. She stands at the centre of a circle of her kind, blonde and green eyed, pale-skinned and sharp-featured, themselves encircled by the battling warriors. They chant a rhythmic beat as she sings, and though the Black Fairy is far away David can see her face clearly as alarm flares in her eyes, as slowly the thick, black substance begins to ooze from her, hissing as it goes, swirling and twisting into a single thick and oily strand._

_“No,” she whispers, then her voice rises to a shriek.“No, it can’t be! It’s impossible! Nooooooo!”_

_She clutches frantically at the magic but it slips from her grasp and when she gropes at her belt for her wand she finds it gone._

_“I don’t imagine you’ll have much further use for this, milady,” says a voice, and both David and the Black Fairy turn to see_ _a human warrior with bright blue eyes brandishing the wand in a mocking salute._

_“Insolent cur!” she snarls, and the human laughs._

_“Would you believe that’s not even the worst thing I’ve been called?” he asks, and darts away into the heaving battlefield._

_The Black Fairy lets out a scream of rage, turning back to look up at the sky and the coiling rope of magic as it sails over the heads of the warriors and towards the circle where Emma’s ancestor stands, calling it to her with her song. It heeds her call with typical ill humour, hovering malevolently and obediently above the circle as the fae woman holds up a small, purple stone._

_The darkness shrieks as it is pulled into the stone, writhing and twisting in concert with the impotent howls of the Black Fairy, but Emma’s ancestor neither flinches nor wavers. She pulls in every particle of the darkness and when the last traces have been absorbed she waves her hand over the stone with a few final, whispered words and then collapses, stumbling forward into the arms of her kin._

_“It is done,” she breathes. “It is done.”_

_The scene fades once more and when it resolves David is back at the circular stone in the forest, this time surrounded by humans and fae alike._

_“Then we have an accord,” says the human man who captured the Black Fairy’s wand, placing his prize upon the circle._

_“Yes,” replies Elisedd. “The human race agrees to relinquish all claim to magic. The fae peoples agree to keep the Black Fairy’s darkness bound for eternity, held in the tywyll stone and guarded by the Awyr people. Fae magic and cures shall remain available to any humans who seek them and no human shall encroach on lands the fae hold sacred. We are in agreement on these points?”_

_The human nods. “We are.”_

_“Then let it be done.”  
_

_“Not yet, Elisedd, if you please,” says a third voice._ _“There is one more thing.”_

 _These words are spoken by another blond and green-eyed fae, this one male. “My people, the llwyth awyr_ , _agree to guard the tywyll stone” he says, “but this task is a heavy burden upon us. My wi—” his voice breaks as pain flashes across his delicate features. “My wife, Arianrhod, chosen by the moon herself to lead our people, has given her life to contain the darkness,” he continues gruffly. “And now my daughter Morcanta must carry the weight both of her legacy and the stone. Though we accept to bear these burdens gladly, we respectfully request not to bear them alone. We would ask that a human representative agree to take up at least a part of the weight alongside us, for the sake of our people and of the covenants, and for the sake of all our descendants.”_

_“That seems fair,” says Elisedd. “Cynbel oCymric? What say ye?”_

_The human man nods. “We agree,” he says. “A similar thought had occurred to us as well. But humans are far more vulnerable to magic than the fae, and so in shouldering this burden we will require some protection.”_

_“Nynniaw? Is this condition acceptable to the_ _Awyr people?”_

_Emma’s ancestor nods. “We can place a shielding spell upon you,” he replies. “One that shall fuse with your blood and pass on to your descendants, removing your susceptibility to any magic. And in order that the location of the tywyll stone not be made too plain to see, we propose that such shielded human guardians should be paired with each fae tribe, to further protect the stone and ensure the covenants are kept.”_

_The crowd hums with murmurs of agreement. “These are fair terms,” says Cynbel, “which we gladly accept.”_

_Smoke swirls up again and David is yanked from the vision,_ gasping and stumbling and nearly falling, reaching out blindly for something to hold on to. 

“Steady on, there, mate,” said Killian, catching him by his arm, but David’s head throbbed and the room begin to spin around him, and the sound of Killian’s voice grew fainter as his eyes rolled back in his head and he tumbled into unconsciousness. 

~

When he opened his eyes again the first sight to meet them was Killian, dressed as usual in his black leather jacket and black t-shirt bearing the faded image of a skull, belting a long sword around his waist.

“That’s—” David gasped, blinking hard and giving his head a firm shake. The images from his vision were still swirling in his mind, and though he did feel he now had a firmer understanding of just what, precisely, the _fuck_ , some things he suspected would still require some getting used to. “That’s a sword,” he sputtered. 

“Naturally,” said Killian, pulling the blade from its scabbard with a flourish and examining its edge. “You didn’t think I’d be going in armed with nothing but my good looks?” 

“Well, no, but—” 

“Speaking of which, you’ll be needing one too. Belle!” 

The air next to him shimmered and Belle resolved into it, a large, leather-bound book in her hand and a bright smile on her face. “Hey, David,” she said. “Killian tells me you’ve been having a bit of an adventure.” 

“Uh, yeah, I guess that’s one way to put it.” 

“Oh I’d love to go back and see the ancient times,” said Belle dreamily. “I don’t suppose you’d let _me_ have a sip of that potion?”

“I’m pretty sure it only works on the living, love,” said Killian, and David barely resisted the urge to smack himself on the forehead. _She_ haunts _the library. Duh._

“Typical,” pouted Belle. “I haven’t had _any_ fun in nearly five hundred years. But I have” —she held out the book, open to a brightly illustrated page— “acquired some serious research skills in that time, and I’m pretty sure I’ve found it.” 

Killian peered at the book. “Where the devil is _that_ supposed to be?” 

“It’s one of the old classroom towers. When I was alive we used to learn magical defence there.” 

“Well that would at least make some sense. Victor, mate, do you suppose you might rustle up something capable of dissolving a mystical lock or two? I mean, I know it’s a _potion_ and all, but this one does seem to be rather more in your wheelhouse.” 

Victor ignored the sarcasm. “On it,” he said.

Killian turned back to David. “Ready then, mate?” 

“I—” David wished mightily that he could say yes, of course he was. “I genuinely have no idea.” 

Killian laughed. “That seems reasonable, given what you’ve just been through.” 

“It might help if I actually knew what we were doing now.” 

“Oh that’s quite simple.” Killian gave him a wide grin and the worst wink David had ever seen. “We’re going to fetch your sword.” 

~

Emma regained consciousness then promptly wished she hadn’t, as nausea roiled in her stomach and some unseen force attempted to drive an ice pick through her skull.

Instinctively, she knew not to move or groan or do anything that might alert her abductors that she was no longer unconscious. Anyone powerful enough to incapacitate her in this way was an enemy to be reckoned with, and despite feeling like how she’d always heard hangovers described Emma was determined to find out who the hell these people were and what they thought they were going to do with her.

She could feel the forest around her, the soft, peaty ground beneath her cheek and the rustling of the leaves in the wind, the power of her connection to the land and all the things that grew from it. She sank her fingers deep into the dirt and prepared.

“Mother, we don’t even know what we’re looking for!” a voice exclaimed, with a note of petulance and an underlying quaver of fear that caught Emma’s attention.

“We’ll find it,” replied a second voice, flat and coldly confident.

“How?” pressed the first one. “ _How_ will we find something we have only the vaguest ideas about?”

“She’ll tell us what we need to know.”

“Mother, you don’t under _stand!_ We only managed to capture her because we took her by surprise! We have _no_ means of getting her to talk, and her Guardian—”

“I took care of him.”

“You hit him on the head, he’ll survive,” the first voice retorted. “If you had actually _read_ the tribal histories you’d know that it takes more than a big stick to eliminate a fae Guardian!”

“She’s right, Mother,” said a third voice, dry and wicked. “You should have killed him.”

“Perhaps,” drawled the second, “but there wasn’t time. If he is as and what you say he is, Regina, he’ll come for her. And we will be ready for him.”

“Ready for...” The first voice, Regina, trailed off in exasperation. “ _How_ will we be ready? In case you forgot, we _don’t even know what we’re looking for!_ ”

Emma knew, though. She knew exactly what the histories of the fae tribes hinted at, just enough hints to catch the notice of the clever and the ambitious, not nearly enough to give them what they would need to know. These three were hardly the first to come in search of it and they would not be the last. She’d seen them last night for what they were and though she doubted they would actually recognise that which they sought, Emma hadn’t hesitated for a moment to leave the tywyll stone behind, trusting that Killian would find it and understand the message that she sent by leaving it in his care. 

He would be on his way to her now, she knew that too. Her Guardian would die to protect her as he was duty bound by the covenants and his heritage to do, but even beyond that Emma knew that Killian Jones would never not fight for her. 

She cracked her eyelid open just far enough that she could see the women attached to the voices. Only the three, she was relieved to note, and apparently without backup. Two younger and one older, a mother and her daughters, the mother with a haughty expression and brown hair beginning to show streaks of grey. Her daughters did not much resemble each other; one had a tawny complexion and dark hair falling in soft waves around her shoulders, while the other’s hair was red and wildly curling around her pale, sharp face. Half-sisters, at a guess, thought Emma, and unless she was gravely mistaken both half-fae. A human woman with two half-fae daughters whose fathers were of different tribes. That was _very_ interesting.

Also interesting were the piles of scrolls she could see poking out of an old trunk behind them, scrolls she recognised as library copies of the more well-known tribal histories. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, she’d once read, and it appeared these women had a very little knowledge indeed. And were all the more dangerous for it.

She closed her eyes again then pretended to wake, letting out a long groan as she sank her fingers further still into the soft soil and felt the forest stir around her.

“Ah,” said the mother. “She’s awake.”

“Where—where am I?” groaned Emma. “What happened?”

“What happened is that you are now our prisoner _princess,_ ” cooed the mother’s voice, and despite herself Emma felt icy fear twist around her heart. “And you are going to tell us where the Black Fairy’s magic is kept.”

“I—” Emma groaned, cracking open her eyes again to see all three women watching her expectantly. Regina’s expression was apprehensive, her red-haired sister’s triumphant. And their mother… her face wore an expression of naked greed that made Emma’s skin crawl. This human woman had no magic but her daughters did, and she, oh, she wanted what they had.

“I—” she said again, and the women leaned forward, their attention so captivated by Emma that they failed to notice the tree branches bending and closing in around them, or the grey-green roots of the forest plants breaking through the ground, rising up and curling around their trunk full of scrolls and crumbling the fragile parchment into dust.

“I don’t think I will,” said Emma.

~

The old classroom towers, David had been firmly informed by the assistant director of the university’s Office of Residency Affairs, were closed. Had been closed, she told him, for some centuries now, at least since the Hall had been renamed. Andersen students were to attend their classes in the academic buildings and that was all there was to it. David had shrugged and agreed and signed the form she gave him, not entirely clear on what made her so extraordinarily adamant on the point. 

Now, as he trailed up a spiral staircase made of stone, with dips worn into the centre of each step by the feet of many generations of students long past, he thought he might have some inkling as to why. This place was dangerous, and not just because the steps were worn. There were whispers in its very walls, centuries of magic infused into each minute mote of dust, and that dust and those walls and every other thing in and around them was not best pleased by the appearance of interlopers. 

Despite this he pressed on, for Emma and because he doubted that Killian, his hand gripping the pommel of his sword and his jaw set, would allow anything to deter him from his goal. Victor followed at Killian’s heels, carrying another steaming beaker, with August behind David bringing up the rear and Belle, glowing with an otherworldly light, serving as their beacon through the shifting shadows. 

Around and around they climbed, through the darkness and the whispers until David’s head was spinning and he’d lost all sense of time, then quite suddenly a door appeared in front of them. Belle pushed it open and led the way into the room beyond. David followed eagerly, glad to be out of that interminable stairwell. 

The room was large and circular, quite as you would expect a tower room to be. It had four tall and pointed windows with four columns spaced evenly between them. There were no desks, but smallish wooden tables arranged in a circle and one larger one in front of the largest window, upon a raised dais. 

Killian began to move around the room in what David could only describe as a prowl, muttering to himself as he went. He appeared to be measuring the size of the stones in the floor, the distance from window to window, and the position of the stairs they had just ascended. 

“If this is what I think it is,” he said to Belle, “it’ll be aligned to the eastern point.” 

Belle nodded. “That seems likely. But how will we know where to look? None of us has the right kind of magic to detect it.” 

“That might not be entirely true.” Killian looked at David and Belle followed his gaze. 

David had to suppress a flinch. _What now?_

“How are you holding up, mate?” Killian asked kindly. 

“Fine,” replied David. “So far, at least.” 

Killian grinned. “I’m glad you’re catching on.” 

David sighed. “So what do I have to do?”

“Just be yourself.” 

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?

“Close your eyes,” Killian instructed, “and tell me what you feel.”

David let his eyes fall shut, shivering as the spiders tangoed across the nape of his neck. “Like something’s watching me,” he said frankly. 

“Like it’s calling to you?” Killian's voice was sharp. 

The whispers in the walls grew louder. “Yeah,” said David. “I can hear... something.” 

“Can you tell where it’s coming from?” 

“From all around.” 

“Are you sure? Concentrate.” 

David focused on the loudest whispers. “From… below us? Somehow?” 

“Good.” Killian sounded satisfied. “Can you follow it?” 

David frowned, concentrating hard. He felt an odd tug just behind his bellybutton, urging him to move, which he did, opening his eyes to see that he was being led towards the largest window and the raised table. He followed the pull until it stopped, abruptly, replaced by an overwhelming urge to go _down_. “There,” he said, pointing at the large, square stone beneath his feet. “It’s coming from there.” 

Everyone gathered around, peering at the stone he indicated. 

“Victor,” said Killian. “Do your thing.” 

David stepped back to make way as Victor took his steaming beaker and dripped its contents carefully onto the mortar that held the stone in place. Nothing happened, to David’s eyes, but the others waited tensely and with bated breath until all the mortar was covered. When the last drop dripped from the beaker a faint click sounded in the air and they all exhaled.

Killian unsheathed his sword and placed the tip just in the centre of the stone. Closing his eyes, he murmured a few words David couldn’t quite make out, then gave the sword a sharp 90-degree twist. The stone made a groaning noise and shifted, shimmered, then faded away to reveal a set of steep stone stairs leading downwards to—

“Where do they go?” David demanded. 

Killian caught his eye. “Below,” he replied. 

~

The stairs were pitch black and endless. David kept his eyes trained as best he could on Belle, but even her glow began to fade the deeper they descended into… wherever this was. He wished he knew where they were going, if only so that this strange and powerful pull he felt would have some destination, some _explanation_ of just what the hell it was.

After a small eternity the stairs ended, so abruptly that Killian stumbled and David had to grab at the wall to avoid crashing into him. “Ugh,” Killian groaned, leaning his own hand against the wall to get his balance and bearings. “I guess this is it.” 

As he spoke a faint glow appeared, a small flicker in a vague distance, and with his jaw set grimly Killian began to walk towards it, the others on his heels. The glow grew stronger the closer they came, and then with a flare as bright as daylight it encompassed them. They blinked for a moment and when their eyes adjusted they found themselves in what was by all appearances a forest clearing. A very familiar forest clearing, David realised, with tall trees that reached up to the sky and a large, round stone at its centre. 

Belle gasped. “Is this…”

“Aye,” said Killian. “The chamber of the Fae Council. If the sword is anywhere, it’s here.” He turned to David. “Mate?”

David nodded. He had no idea how he knew what to do, only that he did. The knowledge came from somewhere deep within him, the same place as the images he’d seen after drinking the purple potion. He knew that if he laid his hand on the stone just _so_ , if he then pressed against it gently, that the shielding spell would fall away and his sword would appear. He knew this, and yet he still couldn’t _quite_ believe his eyes. 

The sword was breathtaking. Longer than he would have imagined and viciously sharp, with an ornate hilt and symbols carved into the blade… symbols his brain wanted to understand, insisted that it _should_ understand, but which hovered stubbornly just beyond his comprehension. 

“Take it,” said Killian, nodding at the sword. “It’s yours.” 

_How is it mine_ , David wanted to ask. _How is this, any of this, even possible?_

The moment his fingers gripped its hilt the symbols on the sword began to glow, as though molten metal were flowing through them. As David lifted it from the table he felt a weight around his waist, and looked down to see a sword belt much like Killian’s appear around his hips. 

He turned to meet Killian’s eyes. “How?” he whispered. “I know we don’t have time for explanations, but please, just tell me— _how?_ ”

“You’re a Guardian,” said Killian, with a small smile. “Like me.”

~

The trip back from the council chamber to the classroom tower and then out of the Hall and into the forest felt as though it took no time at all. Or more likely, David thought, he was just too preoccupied to take notice of it passing. 

Killian’s words kept echoing in his ears. _You’re a Guardian._

David had no idea what that meant, but he couldn’t deny how deeply he knew that it was true. 

They entered the forest just as Snow, Graham, and Ruby were leaving it, looking shaken and anxious. 

“What did you find?” Killian asked them. 

“There are very clear tracks,” Snow replied. “Clumsy ones. Whoever took Emma doesn’t know this forest at all. They must just have chosen it thinking it would make a good hideout.”

"We followed them as far as we could, but there was no sign of them ending," Graham added. 

"All right,” said Killian, removing the purple amulet from his pocket and holding it up. “Lead the way.” 

David wasn't sure whether he was addressing Snow or the amulet, or possibly both, but it didn’t seem to matter as they pressed deeper and deeper into the forest, further than he had ever dared venture before. With each step Killian’s face grew more grim. He gripped the amulet tightly by its leather strap as it began to glow and hum, an endless, atonal hum. It hung from Killian’s hand at a sharp and unnatural angle, seeming to pull him along behind it as they grew closer to wherever Emma was. 

Snow shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “Where did they take her?” she whispered. “How did they even get so deep into the forest?” 

“I don’t know,” said Killian. “Everyone, stay on your toes.” 

Without warning the ground beneath their feet began to rumble and shift, the thick, damp soil cracking open as the roots beneath it moved, slithering like snakes beneath the surface and heading in the very direction they themselves were following. 

“Emma,” muttered Killian, as he broke into a run. “Bloody _hell,_ woman!” 

The others ran after him, leaping over the roots and the shifting soil with a nimble speed that David was hopeless to match. He tripped and stumbled and barely managed to keep his feet under him until Graham and Ruby appeared at his sides, each catching one of his arms and propping him between them as they ran. 

The forest before them was a blur of movement, twisting roots and waving branches, magic spitting and hissing through the air, and David was just about to cry out in protest—there was no way they could enter that melee and come out alive—when a figure emerged from the chaos, golden hair whipped to a frenzy by the wind and red cloak swirling around her. 

Killian raced to her and caught her in his arms, lifting her feet off the ground and burying his face in her hair. “Bloody hell, Swan,” he whispered. Emma clung to him, her fists tight in the back of his jacket, as the rest of the group gathered around them. 

Killian set Emma on her feet and loosened his hold on her, stepping back just enough to give her a glare that even David could see held no heat. “What the devil do you think you’re doing, love?” he grumbled. “Depriving me of a dashing rescue.”

“I _told_ you,” retorted Emma, “the only one who saves me is me.” She smiled softly and caressed his face, fingertips brushing his cheekbone. “But I’m glad you came, Killian.” 

“I’ll always come for you, darling,” he replied with a smirk. “In all senses of the word.” 

She snorted and gave the back of his head a feeble smack, but didn’t protest when his arms tightened around her again and his hand tangled in her hair. 

“Well this is adorable,” said Victor. “If a bit sickening. But would you mind telling us just what exactly you've been up to here?”

The movement in the forest had ceased the moment Emma and Killian embraced but the space behind them was still in chaos, with unearthed roots and tree branches bent at unnatural angles, forming a very effective-looking cage. 

“I’ve bound them,” said Emma. “In magic it will take them some time to break.” 

“They?” demanded Killian. 

“Yeah, three of them. A human woman and her half-fae daughters. I can’t keep them trapped forever but we should have enough time to figure out what to do with them.”

“You can’t just kill them?” asked August. 

“No!” said Emma and Killian in unison, as Graham punched August’s shoulder. 

“Hey, just putting it on the table,” August protested. 

“We’re not going to kill them,” said Emma firmly. “There’s something about them... something that I can't quite put my finger on, but honestly it troubles me. I need to know more before we decide how to act. Let’s get back to the dorm.” 

“The dorm?” asked David. Emma turned to him and her eyes lit with amusement. 

“Well, you must have had a rough few hours,” she said, nodding at the sword he held. 

David grinned a bit sheepishly. “You could say that.” 

“Welcome to the team,” said Emma, smiling warmly. “And yes, back to the dorm. I need my plants, my books, a scrying mirror, and a cup of tea, not necessarily in that order. Let’s go.” 

___


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SO yeah. The chapter count has grown. There’s a lot going on here. David has a backstory. Emma and Killian have a mission. IT’S A LOT and it needs more words. 
> 
> C/W: This chapter contains minor (and canon compliant) character death and a potentially distressing scene involving the accidental death of a child. It’s not graphic but it is emotional so be prepared.

They returned to Andersen just as twilight was creeping across the sky and the moon rising into it, heavy and dark gold as it crested the forest trees. Emma watched it through the window of her room, where she and Killian and David had retreated to rest a bit and collect themselves before deciding on their next move. The others had also gone to their rooms rest and prepare, and now David sat on Emma’s bed with his hands clasped in his lap and his shoulders tight as Killian made Emma a cup of tea and she frowned at the moon. 

David watched in silence as Killian approached Emma and offered her a steaming cup. She accepted it with a smile and a cheek turned up to meet the kiss he dropped on it, in a gesture so comfortable and natural it gave David’s heart a little twinge. He wondered how he could ever have thought they weren’t right for each other when the depth and intensity of their love was so very, very obvious. 

But then he was becoming aware that there were in fact a great many obvious things in this world that he hadn’t been able to see. It was not a comfortable thought. 

“So,” he said, breaking the silence. “I get that you’ve both got a lot of thinking to do right now. But could you—is there time for you just to explain a few things first? Like exactly what the hell is going on? I feel like everyone knows what’s happening here but me.” 

“That shouldn’t be a new feeling for you,” remarked Killian with a smirk. David sighed. 

“Yeah, okay, that’s fair. I’m not sure how I missed so much of what was happening around me, but I see it now and I’d like to understand it.”

Emma and Killian exchanged a glance. 

“What exactly have you seen?” Emma asked. 

“Visions?” David said uncertainly. “Of the past? Killian made me drink something purple and then I started seeing things.” 

“Something purple?” Emma frowned. 

“Yeah. He put some grey powder and a crushed up leaf into a beaker full of something Victor gave him, and it turned purple. And started to smoke,” said David.

“You gave him purple willow bark?” Emma turned to Killian in alarm.

“Aye,” Killian replied. “Along with the sap from one of Jane’s leaves.” 

“Oh.” Emma relaxed. “Well, that was the right choice of leaf at least.” 

“I do listen when you talk about the plants, love.” 

“Hmmm,” said Emma. “And how did you feel afterwards?” she asked David. 

“I—kind of passed out.” 

Emma nodded. “I’m not surprised. Purple willow packs a punch. Normally we blend a few herbs into the emulsifier to soften its effects, but there’s no way Killian could have known the correct ones. He did the best he could in the circumstances.” She gave Killian a smile that tried hard to be sardonic. “This time, though, I’ll give you the gentler version.” 

David started. “ _This_ time?” 

“Well, yeah,” said Emma. “It’s the easiest way to give you the information you need. We could explain, I suppose, but it’s really best if you see it for yourself. Especially if you want to know your own history.” 

“My… own history?” 

Emma nodded, her expression sorrowful and soft with sympathy. “Yeah. You’ve seen the history of the fae and the Guardians, now you need to understand where you fit into that.” 

“Killian—” David cleared his throat. “Killian said I’m a—a Guardian? Like he is?” 

“Yeah you are. But as you’ve probably guessed there’s more to it than that. Are you ready to See?” 

David swallowed hard. Part of him still wanted to say no, to deny all of this and run, back to yesterday when things had made sense. But a bigger part of him knew he needed to know, and to understand why all these crazy things that were happening to him seemed less and less crazy the more he thought about them. The more he _thought._

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.” 

~

_It’s less abrupt this time, smoother, as though he’s drifting in a boat on a misty sea. The mist clears and the sea recedes and he is standing at the edge of a wood, with fields at his back and before him trees that reach up to the sky, tall and straight as in the forest of the fae council, only now they frame not an ancient round stone but a house. It’s a nice house if rather a small one, humble but homey, made of wood and fronted by a well-kept garden with a creek running through it. Something about the house tickles at David’s memory—though no, not his memory exactly, more a feeling… the sense that he has been here before._

_He blinks and finds himself inside the house, in a cramped bedroom where a woman lies back against rumpled pillows, exhausted, cradling a tiny newborn baby in her arms. Slowly she traces the curve of the baby’s cheek with the tip of her finger, her eyes alight with wonder._

_“James,” she whispers. “Your name is James.”_

_“And who is this one?” asks a voice. David turns to see another woman, plain and sturdy and with kind eyes, holding up another tiny bundle. This second bundle she places gently in the crook of the woman’s other arm._

_“David,” says the woman on the bed. “This one is David.”_

_David gasps and his eyes fly to the woman, but before he can get a good look at her the scene is shifting and he sees the babies—himself and his brother—his_ brother _—now toddlers, running through the woods behind the house. He knows, somehow, which is himself and which is James—though their faces are identical, James’s wears an expression of recklessness and mischief as he runs as fast as his young legs can take him to the edge of the creek that comes out from the woods to cut across the corner of their garden. Young David follows, his tiny face crumpling as he calls out to his brother, and David now can feel the terror of his younger self as he sees James slip on the slick rocks that border the creek, hears his brother’s cry, abruptly silenced as his head hits the stones… David sees his own young legs move as fast as they can—faster than they should—but still far too slowly. He hears a heartrending scream, feels the flurry of movement as his mother runs from the garden—she turned her back for the briefest moment—and David looks away. His toddler self is bawling and he cannot watch it, cannot listen to his mother’s broken sobs… this, he thinks, this must be why she never told him that he had a twin. Her cries are unearthly as she cradles James’s tiny form, and they echo in David’s aching chest as he squeezes his eyes shut and wills the scene to change._

_It does, and when he looks again he’s back inside the house where it is clear that time has passed—though it cannot be much; David’s younger self is older now but by a few months or so, no more. He is in the bedroom again, where a man with a very familiar square chin and blond hair arms himself for battle, while David’s mother sits on the bed and pleads for him to stay._

_“You know that I can’t, Ruth,” the man says, “The call has come, and my duty—”_

_“Oh, your_ duty! _” Ruth cries. “You’re not even the chosen Guardian!”_

_“But I am_ a _guardian,” he insists. “I must go to battle when called. And David—”_

_“David is a child!”_

_“A child with a bounden duty, the same as my own. You knew this when you married me.”_

_“I know. I know I did but I can’t bear it now,” sobs Ruth. “I can’t, Robert. Not so soon after James.”_

_Robert takes her face gently in his hands and kisses her. “I will return,” he says softly. “I promise, my love.”_

_But David knows, even without being shown by the vision, that he never did._

_The scene shifts again. Very little time has passed, David can tell, but the change in his mother is heartbreaking. She is wan, gaunt, lying listlessly on the sofa with no expression in her eyes, and David can feel the worry of his toddler self as he makes a show of playing quietly on the floor, but with far more attention on his mother than his toys. She is weakened by despair and fragile from her losses, and young though he is, David is afraid for her._

_There is a knock at the door but his mother makes move to answer or even acknowledge it. It’s David who toddles over and cries “Come in!”_

_The door opens to admit a woman, pale and blonde and green-eyed. Her face resembles Emma’s though considerably older, and she lacks the determined chin, the stubborn glint in the eye that Emma has._

_His mother’s eyes flit briefly to the woman then away, and she makes no move to rise. “Princess Angharad,” she says flatly._

_“Ruth,” replies the woman, coming to stand next to the sofa. Her stern expression softens in sympathy and, David thinks, a hint of pity. “I’m so very sorry.”_

_“I’m sure you are,” sneers Ruth. “You lost a fine warrior, after all.”_

_David gapes—never in his life has he heard his mother speak so rudely. Angharad’s expression does not change._

_“Your sacrifice has been great—” she begins, but Ruth interrupts her._

_“Yes it has,” she says sharply. “And it won’t be any greater. I’m taking David and I am leaving this place.”_

_Angharad’s eyebrows rise then snap together in a frown. “Leaving!” she exclaims._

_“Yes.”_

_“But—you know that David has been chosen as the Guardian for my granddaughter, Emma.”_

_“Yes I do.”_

_“His selection was a great honour.”_

_“Yes it was. And I refuse it. You can’t have him.”_

_“Ruth—”_

_“No!” There’s fire in Ruth’s eyes now, sparking dangerously as she sits up straight to glare at the princess. “You’ve taken my husband. I’ve lost my son. David is all I have left, you will not take him from me too!”_

_“But the Guardian—”_

_“Choose another.”_

_Angharad steps backwards and nearly stumbles into the armchair next to the sofa. She twists her hands together in her lap. “It is your right, as you know, to make this refusal on behalf of your minor child,” she says. “But I would urge you, strongly urge you to reconsider.”_

_“I won’t.” Ruth’s jaw is set. “My mind is made up.”_

_The princess’s own jaw is tight, her eyes troubled. “There is another who might do,” she murmurs, almost to herself. “Closer in age to Emma than we generally prefer and with certain… troubling portents, but if you are truly adamant…” She darts a glance at Ruth._

_“I am,” Ruth confirms. Angharad nods. She looks up again and this time holds Ruth’s gaze._

_“And what is your intention, when you leave us?” she asks. “Where will you go?”_

_“Into the human world. I’m going to raise my son among his own kind, humans who have no obligation to the fae or any knowledge of darkness or covenants. He’ll grow up as far away from magic as I can get him.”_

_Angharad’s face is sorrowful now. “I cannot agree with this decision, as much as I sympathise with why you have taken it. This recent battle has brought great losses to many of our human allies. For that I am boundlessly sorry.”_

_“I don’t accept your apology,” says Ruth stiffly. “Although I do acknowledge it.”_

_“That is fair.” Angharad nods. She straightens her shoulders and looks at Ruth again. “Before I go and with your permission, I would bestow on you one final gift.”_

_Ruth’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “What sort of gift?”_

_Angharad looks at young David, still playing on the floor and listening, older David is certain, to every word. “The human world is not like ours but there is still magic there, and David with his heritage and the distinction that should have been his will find himself drawn to it,” she explains. “I can—close his mind, as it were, to the perception of that magic, make it far more difficult for him to see and easier to rationalise if he does see it.”_

_“You want to mess with my son’s head,” says Ruth flatly._

_“In a manner of speaking,” Angharad concedes. “It’s not normally something I would do especially to a child so young, but understand me well, Ruth—underestimating the pull of his heritage, of two hundred generations of Guardians, would be a grave mistake. Even with this spell upon him he may still find himself drawn by magic. You cannot keep him from it by your will alone.”_

_“Fine,” Ruth spits. “Do what you like.”_

_Angharad approaches young David with a kind smile and kneels beside him._

_“What’s that you’re playing with?” she asks._

_“Lego!” he exclaims. “It’s a castle!”_

_“And a very fine one too,” Angharad murmurs, with such sadness in her eyes David’s heart aches. She brushes the hair from his forehead then lets her hand rest there as she murmurs a few words. David feels his younger mind blur and shift and resettle. The toddler’s eyes go hazy and he blinks them slowly, and when the princess removes her hand he returns to his toys, blithely building his castle as though she were not even there._

_Angharad rises to her feet. “I shall take the sword now,” she says briskly._

_Ruth gets up from the sofa and disappears through the bedroom door. When she returns she is carrying a long sword—the same sword David last saw belted around his father’s waist. The one that is now in his own possession._

_“What will you do with it?” Ruth asks, thrusting the sword at Angharad._

_“Keep it safe,” she replies. “It rightfully belongs to your son, and to his descendants. One day perhaps one of them might wish to claim it.”_

_“I hope not,” says Ruth. “With every fibre of my being I hope it.”_

_“That is your right, and your prerogative,” replies Angharad. “As it is mine to hope that despite everything that has come to pass, one day David may take it up again, and find his way back to us.”_

_~_

Emma sat in her armchair with her legs curled beneath her and a cup of tea steaming gently in her hand, watching the images flickering in her scrying mirror. David was lying in her bed, his eyes moving frantically beneath closed lids and his limbs twitching as he re-lived his history. Killian and Harriet both sat at his beside, ready to react should anything go wrong. Emma cast a glance at them, smiling fondly at the sight of one of Harriet’s fronds curled gently around Killian’s neck, stroking the nape of it as Emma herself liked to do. Killian gave a little hum at the tickling caress but did not look up from the book that lay open in his lap. 

Emma turned her attention back to the mirror. The images it revealed confirmed her suspicions, but something about the whole business still troubled her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She frowned as she went back over some of the images, playing them again, willing herself to see what she was missing. 

Harriet unfurled one of her vines—not the one standing ready to protect David or the one fondling Killian (Harriet was an excellent multi-tasker) and with the closest thing to a long-suffering sigh a plant can muster tapped the tip of a leaf against one of the posters Emma had blu-tacked to the wall. The one that outlined the lunar cycles of the year 2020. Another leaf gestured emphatically at the window, where the golden moon was still rising in the sky.

“Of course,” breathed Emma. “That’s it.” 

Killian looked up from his book. “That’s what, love?” 

“I’ve just figured out what’s been bothering me about this whole thing,” Emma exclaimed. Harriet huffed and folded her vine as a person might fold their arms across their chest. “Okay, okay,” laughed Emma, “it was Harriet who figured it out.” 

“Naturally.” Killian gave Harriet a little scratch behind her leaf. 

“But it all makes sense now,” Emma continued. “Things I couldn’t find a good explanation for, like why those women would kidnap me and why my instincts would tell me they were deadly dangerous when every other sign indicates that they’re really, really not.” She set her teacup down on her desk and leapt to her feet, dropping an absent kiss on Killian’s cheek as she headed for the door. “You stay here until David wakes up, okay? It should only be a few more minutes. I need to go talk to Belle.” 

_~_

_Angharad’s final words echo in his ears as the scene shifts around her, and though her face appears unchanged David senses she is now some years older. This seems confirmed by the young woman seated in front of her, a blonde and green-eyed fae that is, finally, Emma._

_She’s so young, David thinks, with a small twinge beneath his heart, though this cannot be more than a few years in the past. Emma’s face is rounder and her hair less styled, though he can see the seeds of the woman he knows in the stubborn set to her girlish jaw and the wilful spark in her eyes. She’s dressed in a long split skirt and a fitted leather jerkin in her trademark red, which even with his limited knowledge from these visions David recognises as a traditional fae style, updated for the modern world, and he is not surprised that this is something young Emma might choose to wear. She sits on a wide, cushioned seat in a large room where the walls appear to be formed of tightly twisted tree branches with tall windows and a wooden door set into them. David reflects for a moment how a mere twenty-four hours ago such decor would have astonished him, then returns his attention to Angharad and to Emma._

_“Now that you are about to come of age,” the elder fae is saying, “it’s high time you met your Guardian.”_

_“Ugh. Do I_ have _to?”_

_Emma manages not to whine but David can tell it’s a near thing. She crosses her arms over her chest and it’s plain to see her lower lip wants badly to pout._

_“Don’t you want to?” Angharad looks shocked._

_“No, actually,” Emma retorts. “I don’t need a man to take care of me.”_

_“He is not a man, he’s your Guardian,” her grandmother scolds, “and his job is not to ‘take care of you.’ It is to protect you.”_

_“I don’t need that either!”_

_Angharad’s expression says plainly that she is holding tight to her patience. “Emma, the most recent battles are within your lifetime—”_

_“Barely,” Emma mutters._

_“—and despite your gifts for scrying you cannot predict with certainty when there might be another. After the loss of both your parents and so many of our kind we simply cannot afford to be without our Guardians should we find ourselves again under attack. Without their aid fae kind would have been lost thousands of years ago, and indeed as the covenants say—”_

_“All right, all right,” groans Emma. “For the love of the goddess, don’t start quoting the covenants. I’ll accept this Guardian and do what is required of me. But you canNOT make me need him!”_

_“I will pray that you never do,” says Angharad, now with a twinkle of humour behind her stern expression._

_A knock sounds at the door, and she goes to open it. A young man enters the room, mid-twenties at David’s estimate and moving with a distinct stiffness in his right leg. “Ah, good day to you, Captain Jones,” Angharad greets him warmly. “Do come in. But where is your brother?”_

_“Outside looking at your horses,” says the man with a sigh. He continues to speak but David doesn’t hear his words—he has noticed Emma slip quietly from the room and he follows her. She creeps down a narrow hallway and through a door at the back of the dwelling. Once outside she darts through a sparse scattering of trees, heading for a long, low building that David gathers to be the stables. Just as she approaches the broad stable door it flies open and a boy strides through it, colliding with Emma and barely managing to catch her before she can fall._

_“Oh!” she cries and the boy grunts, blinking startled blue eyes as he gazes down at her. Her own eyes widen and for a moment they stand frozen, his arms around her waist and her hands on his chest, staring at each other in helpless fascination—until the boy blinks rapidly and clears his throat as he steps back._

_Killian—because of course it’s he—scratches nervously behind his ear._

_“Um,” he says, “er... ah…”_

_“Eloquent,” teases Emma, who has by all appearance regained her composure—though David notes the bright flush in her cheeks and the breathiness of her voice. “You must be Killian Jones.”_

_“Aye,” he replies, collecting his wits and giving her a hesitant smile. “And you are of course the princess Emma.”_

_“I am.”_

_“It’s a pleasure to meet you, lass.”_

_“The pleasure is all yours,” retorts Emma. Killian looks first startled, then affronted, then captivated, all within a few blinks of an eye. A delighted grin spreads across his face, with just a hint of the smirk he will perfect in years to come._

_Emma herself blinks at that grin, and the flush on her cheeks deepens. “You should know from the start that I don’t need a Guardian,” she declares, attempting to cover her discomfiture with a haughty glare. “I can take care of myself.”_

_“Oh yes,” says Killian. His gaze travels slowly down her form and back up again. “I don’t doubt that you can.”_

_“Oh.” Emma scowls at his easy acquiescence and also, David imagines, at the way he’s looking at her—as though she’s the most brilliant thing he’s ever seen. She shifts uncomfortably as Killian moves closer._

_“But however capable you may be, Your Highness,” he says, his voice dropping lower and his expression hardening, “and regardless of whether or not you want one, you’ve got a Guardian. Me.” He leans in closer still and David can hear Emma’s breath catch. “And I intend to take my duties very, very seriously.”_

_“But I don’t_ need _you!” Emma snaps. There’s frustration in her tone and temper in her eyes, though she doesn’t, David notices, back away._

_“And_ I _don’t care.”_

_They are so close now their noses are nearly touching and the air crackles with the tension between them. David is all too familiar with these battles of wills of theirs, having witnessed many firsthand in the dorm, but this one, the first one, is the most intense of all. He holds his own breath as he watches them take the measure of each other, notes the rapid rise and fall of their chests and the way their eyes are locked, how Killian’s hand curls around Emma’s hip and hers slides up his chest without either of them noticing. He begins to feel as though he should look away—this moment is too intimate for him to witness—but then Angharad’s voice cries “Emma!” from the direction of the house and she and Killian wrench themselves apart._

_They stare at each other for a moment as they attempt to catch their breaths, then Emma gives her hair a toss._

_“Well,” she huffs, “have it your way, I guess. You can follow me around if you like, I can’t stop you, but you’re going to look pretty stupid when you show up to save me and find I’ve already saved myself.”_

_Killian laughs, loud and bright. “I’m prepared to take that chance, princess,” he says._

_The scene shimmers and resolves into two figures walking through the woods. One is Killian and the other his brother, the man whom Angharad addressed earlier as Captain Jones. His limp is more pronounced now, a halting gait caused by the stiff way he holds his right leg and his clear reluctance to put weight on it, as though the knee cannot be fully trusted. The two of them emerge from the trees and out onto a narrow road where a car is parked. David notes the way Killian moderates his own pace to match his brother’s, unconsciously, walking slowly despite the buzz of nervous energy that is rolling off him in waves._

_They approach the car and Killian removes a set of keys from his pocket to unlock it, then gets behind the wheel while his brother with effort eases himself into the passenger seat. There’s a scowl on Killian’s face and his movements are jerky as he puts the car in gear; his brother has been lecturing him and he is clearly displeased. David hasn’t been listening to their words but he concentrates on them now, just in time to hear Killian snap_ _“Bloody hell, Liam—”_

_“Language!”_

_“—I only met her today! We spoke for less than five minutes! Don’t you think it’s a bit premature to be warning me away from her!”_

_“I wish it were,” Liam mutters. “Sometimes five minutes is all it takes.”_

_Killian grips the steering wheel hard with one hand and jams the key into the ignition with the other. “What the devil are you on about?” he grumbles, though the look on his face makes David suspect that he knows full well what Liam is ‘on about’, and that it worries him too._

_Liam sighs. “Look, just—just be careful, little brother.”_

_“When am I not careful, and it’s_ younger _brother, if you don’t mind.”_

_“Killian.” Liam’s face is intensely solemn, with genuine fear behind his eyes. “You can’t fall in love with her.”_

_Killian shoots his brother a glare as he twists the key and the car’s engine roars to life. “I know that,” he snaps, “and I don’t intend to.”_

_David nearly laughs. If that’s what has Liam so concerned, his warning’s come far too late. Killian is halfway in love already, and his feelings are a tide that cannot be turned._

_“Well.” Liam shifts uncomfortably in his seat and folds his arms across his chest. “See that you don’t, then.”_

_Killian twists the wheel and he car peels away. David doesn’t follow it. He can feel the potion thinning in his veins, the visions receding along with the car’s taillights, leaving him standing in the fading forest wondering what on earth could make the prospect of Killian and Emma falling in love strike such fear into a man like Liam Jones._

_~_

David came awake slowly, drifting back to consciousness in that boat on the misty sea. When he opened his eyes he found himself lying on Emma’s bed wrapped in some sort of blanket, warm and quite comfortable and with Killian beside him in a chair, a book open in his lap. He shut the book when he sensed David’s gaze on him, set it aside and offered a smile. 

“How are you feeling, mate?” he asked. 

“Good,” said David, then paused to clear the croak from his voice. “Hell of a lot better than I did after the potion _you_ gave me.” 

“Aye, I don’t doubt it.” Killian chuckled. “ I’m pretty much the furthest thing imaginable from an expert on magic. It was all I could do to remember the basic elements of the potion Angharad gave me when I accepted my Guardian duties.” 

“So you—saw what I did? The visions?”

“I saw what you did the first time,” said Killian. “The fae histories and the origin of the Guardians. That knowledge is given to all of us. These latest visions, though, were for you alone.” 

David moved to sit up only to discover that he couldn’t. What he had taken for a blanket turned out, upon closer examination, to be an enormous, glossy green leaf wrapped tightly around him. 

“What the—” he sputtered. 

“Oh, that’s Harriet,” said Killian, blithely, as though leaves the size of blankets were a thing one found oneself wrapped in as a matter of course. “Don’t worry, she’s friendly. Most of the time.” 

Another leaf appeared in front of David’s face, this one far smaller and with tiny green fronds curling at its base. He could swear it was waving at him. 

“Say hello,” Killian encouraged. 

“Um, hello, uh, Harriet,” said David. The leaf gave a nod. “Um, what’s it—er, _she_ doing here?”

“Keeping you safe.” 

“Oh. Er. Sure. Thanks?” 

The leaf nodded graciously, then curled around his face and patted him on the head. 

“You see?” said Killian. “She’s a sweetheart. Just don’t get on her bad side.” 

“Um. Why?” 

Killian grinned. “Show him, Harriet.” 

The leaf released David’s head and reappeared in front of his face. As he watched, it gave a sudden flex and thorns appeared across its surface, close-set and a good inch long, sharp as daggers. David gulped. “Oh.” 

“Aye. But don’t worry, she likes you. She generally likes the people Emma likes.” 

“Well that’s, um, good.” 

“That it is.” Killian gave Harriet a pat. “Let him up, now, love.” 

Harriet unfurled her leaf and slid it out from under him. David sat up, groaning and flexing his aching muscles. “Is it normal to feel this sore?” he asked. 

“Oh yes. The visions take quite a lot out of you. But here, Emma left you this.” He held out a cup of a dark and steaming liquid. David accepted it warily, and gave it a sniff. It smelled earthy and sweet, like nothing he’d encountered before, and when he chanced a tentative sip it was delicious. 

“What is this?” he asked, taking a larger drink.

“Infusion of the lesser burdock root,” said Killian. 

“Oh, well that doesn’t sound too—” 

“Fermented in wild boar dung.” 

David choked and spat out his mouthful of liquid, wheezing and coughing as Killian laughed and clapped him on the back. “Don’t worry, it’s thoroughly washed before they infuse it,” he said. 

“Yea, that’s not really all that comforting.” 

“Drink it up anyway, mate, it’ll soothe the muscle aches and calm your nerves. Just don’t think too hard about it.” 

David squeezed his eyes shut and gulped down the brew as quickly as he could. Within moments his muscles relaxed and his heart rate slowed. He sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly, then opened his eyes. 

“Better?” inquired Killian. 

“Yeah.” He paused, then added “Physically at least.” 

Killian nodded, and sat back in his chair. “You have questions,” he observed. 

“One or two.” 

“Anything you care to ask, I’ll do my best to answer.” 

David rubbed a hand over his face. There was so much to process in what he’d seen, so much about himself that he had never known. He wondered what Killian knew, wondered how the younger man had managed to identify him as a fellow Guardian. How could he possibly have known? Unless… “How much did you see of… of what I saw today?” he asked.

“I _saw_ none of it, not in visions. I told you, that’s your history and yours alone. But I knew the basic details, about your brother and your father, and the reason your mother took you away from the tribe.” 

“Angharad told you.” 

“Aye.” 

“Because you weren’t supposed to be Emma’s Guardian.” 

Killian shook his head. “No. I wasn’t. Originally it was meant to be my brother Liam.” 

David considered Captain Liam Jones, and his stiff gait. “But he was too badly injured,” he murmured.

“Yes. In the battle that killed your father.” 

David looked up sharply. “But he must have been just a child!” 

“He was ten.” Killian swallowed hard, and when he spoke again his voice was strained. “Too young to fight, but not to young to come under attack. Raiders invaded our house, in search of my father. When Liam told them he had fled, they attacked the both of us. I was barely a year old. Liam shielded me, he wouldn’t let me go no matter what they did to him. Even when they smashed his kneecap beyond repair.” 

David recalled the tiny boy who shared his face, racing towards the creek. It seemed he and Killian had more in common then he’d known. “Why were they after you?” he asked gruffly. “And who’s _they?_ ” 

“We don’t know,” said Killian wryly. “They didn’t exactly stick around to effect introductions. We only know that they were humans, enemies of the fae, trying to eliminate a Guardian and his sons.” 

“Your father’s a Guardian?” 

“He _was,_ ” Killian spat. “Before he ran away and abandoned us. I don’t know if he’s even alive anymore. I don’t care.” He did care though, David thought. The pain of his father’s betrayal remained sharp, even after so many years. But he said nothing, and Killian continued. “At any rate, Liam was left unable to guard the princess, and so the mantle was passed to you.”

“And when my mother took me away—” 

“It came to me, aye. As the very last of last resorts.” He attempted a laugh. “But it must be said that Angharad was never entirely comfortable with me as Emma’s Guardian. She’s highly gifted with Sight and I think she must have known that there was”—he flushed a bright pink and David bit back a smirk—“the potential for deeper feelings between us. But she had, very literally, no other choice.” 

“Are deeper feelings not allowed? Is that why your brother warned you not to fall in love with Emma?” 

“Ah.” Killian scratched behind his ear. “You saw that, did you? Did you also see—”

“Your and Emma’s first meeting?” David did smirk this time. “Yeah.” 

Killian’s flush deepened. “Aye, she, uh, mentioned she might show that to you.” 

“I’m glad she did, actually,” said David. “It was sweet, really, seeing you nearly swallow your own tongue after one look at her.” 

“I didn’t—” Killian began, then caught David’s sardonic expression. “Well, okay, maybe I did,” he conceded. “That’s not the reason she showed you, though.” 

“It’s because you weren’t supposed to get involved with each other,” said David, just a bit smugly. “And she wanted me to understand why in spite of that, you did. Isn’t that it?” 

“You know, I like you better now that you’re not so bloody dense,” Killian retorted, “but it’s also kind of annoying, you actually _seeing_ the things right in front of your face.” 

“Just answer the question, Jones.” 

“Yes,” said Killian shortly. “You’re right. For a Guardian and his charge to fall in love is expressly forbidden. I could be executed for it.” 

“Executed!” 

Killian shrugged. “It’s happened before.” 

“And yet you don’t seem very worried.” 

Killian leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. “Those histories you saw, the war against the Black Fairy and the Guardian alliances,” he said, “they happened over four thousand years ago.” 

“Four _thousand!_ ” 

“Indeed. So as you might imagine, a lot has changed since then. The fae population has steadily dwindled while the human one has surged. Magic is no longer widely used or even known, and much of fae history has been wiped from official records. Up to and including the original name of this very building.” 

_H.C. Andersen,_ David thinks. _Teller of fairy tales. Because what better way to lessen the fear of something than to turn it into a children’s story?_

“Meanwhile,” continued Killian, “the Guardians also have been whittled away to almost nothing. My brother out of commission and our father gone. Your father and brother both killed and you taken away. And that’s just in these past twenty years. Of the twelve fae tribes four have retreated entirely from human contact and refuse to have Guardians, and the eight who remain have only twenty-one active Guardians among them. A century ago there were hundreds of us. A millennium ago, thousands.”

David considered this. “But doesn’t that just make it even more reckless for you and Emma to give in to—um—” 

“Our lustful desires?” Killian mocked. 

“Well, er—” 

“Aye, you might well imagine it would,” Killian replied, dropping the mockery with a sigh. “Except that there’s no one left to pass judgement on us. A ruling of execution would have to be proposed and carried by the Fae Council, which hasn’t been convened for centuries. I’m not sure anyone would even know how to convene it if they wanted to. The covenants that we follow are thousands of years old, made in and for a different time. They no longer suit the needs of anyone, fae or human, but of course only the Fae Council has the power to amend them.” 

“Of course,” murmured David, though he found it rather comforting that fae bureaucracy was apparently as useless as the human version. 

“Something _has_ to change,” said Killian, “but no one knows exactly what or how or who is going to change it. So Emma and I decided that we would. Who better than the protector of the tywyll stone and her Guardian to make the decisions that need making? No one has more authority than we do, and we intend to use it. That’s why we’re not afraid anymore to make our relationship known. We’ll face whatever consequences may come and we’ll fight for each other. We’re prepared to do whatever is necessary to build a world where we can be together and be happy.” 

He spoke so calmly and with such assurance, David thought, like there was no doubt in his mind of his feelings or of Emma’s. David thought of Snow—her face as always bright and beautiful and at the forefront of his mind—and a twisty tangle of yearning tightened in his chest. 

“Well, I’m on your side,” he said. “For whatever that’s worth.” 

Killian smiled. “It’s worth quite a lot, mate. For us personally but also because you’re a Guardian. That’s a heritage that can’t be erased; even though you didn’t grow up with it, it’s still yours. Your sword recognised you. You recognised Emma. And Snow, who, by the way, is also a fae princess. You know, just in case you were interested.” His eyes twinkled with mischief as David shot him a sharp look.

“Does—” David cleared his throat. “Does she have a Guardian?” 

“She does. Chap by the name of Lance. Big fellow, many muscles.” 

“I see. But he’s not, er, here?” 

“He’s nearby,” said Killian. “Ready to respond in an instant if he’s called. Guardians don’t actually have to live so close to their charges as Emma and I do, but—well—” 

“You wanted to be near each other.” 

“Aye.” 

David had so many more questions, dozens of them clamouring for his attention, but before he could ask any the door swung open and Emma appeared. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said. “Everything all right?” 

“Uh, yeah,” David replied. “I think so.” 

“Good, because I think I know what’s going on here. Everyone’s meeting in the common room in five.” 

~

Despite the chill of the night the common room was warm, lit by a bright and crackling fire. David sat on the wide sofa across from the hearth, with Ruby next to him and Graham on her other side. August lounged in the armchair in the corner and Killian in the one next to the fireplace, while Victor leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. Emma stood in front of the fire with Belle hovering at her side, just visible in the orange light of the flames. Snow wasn’t there—she had volunteered to stay back in the forest to guard the women in their tree-branch prison. David wished she hadn’t—there were things he desperately wanted to tell her, though he knew that, as she would say, now was _not_ the time. 

Emma was silent for a moment as she gathered her thoughts. “So as you all now know, I’m the one who has the tywyll stone,” she said finally, and everyone nodded. “It’s been in my family since the beginning, and it was my ancestor Arianrhod who locked the Black Fairy’s magic into the stone in the first place. All my life I’ve been raised knowing that I would be the stone’s protector and I never once questioned that. It was my heritage, and it was decreed by the covenants. I never questioned any of it, until recently.” She cast a glance at Killian, who gave her a smile and an encouraging nod. “I also didn’t question the instinct that told me to leave the stone behind when those women took me,” she continued. “The instinct that told me that I couldn’t allow the stone to fall into their hands. It wasn’t until I got back home this afternoon that it occurred to me to wonder _why_. Why would my instincts react so dramatically when those women were so easy to defeat? It troubled me, and the most troubling thing was that I couldn’t figure out why it was troubling. But now I know. It’s their timing.” 

“Timing?” said Ruby. “What do you mean?”

“Okay,” Emma replied, “here’s the deal, everything I was Shown in the scrying mirror. There are three of them, a mother and two daughters. The mother, Cora, she’s human. She’s got no magic and her knowledge of it seems limited to what’s contained in the standard scrolls—the versions of the histories that are available in any human library. She wouldn’t have access to any of the _actual_ fae histories, and if she raised her daughters among humans it’s unlikely they would either.” 

“Sorry,” said David. “But what do you mean by the _actual_ fae histories?”

“The fae store our history in trees,” explained Emma. “Like the purple willow whose bark gave you your visions. The scrolls tell the broad story, but they hold none of the details you get from seeing the events unfold yourself.” 

“So—all of you have seen these visions?” 

“We’ve all seen a version of them,” said Graham. “The ones involving our own ancestors. But the location of the tywyll stone needed to remain secret, so for obvious reasons we weren’t shown the part involving the trapping of the magic.” 

“But then why was _I_ shown that?” 

“Guardians are all shown what you saw,” Killian replied. “We are all descended from Cynbel, the warrior who captured the Black Fairy’s wand.” 

“What, all of us?” 

“All of us. _Cousin_.” Killian smirked at him. “Cynbel’s tale is the origin of all Guardians, and so we have the right to see it.” 

“So all Guardians know who has the ti—er, the stone?” 

“Yes, and part of our vows include protecting the secret of its location with our lives.” 

“Everything was always about keeping the stone a secret,” said Emma. “So that even if someone did figure out a way to release the Black Fairy’s magic, they wouldn’t know where to look for it.” 

“But somehow this Cora and her daughters figured out where to look for it,” said Ruby. 

“So it seems. But the thing is they don’t actually know what they’re looking for. They don’t even seem to know that the magic is stored in a stone. They only know it’s stored _somewhere_ , and that I have it.” 

“So then they can’t possibly know how to release it,” Ruby cried. 

“Or how to control it even if they did,” Graham pointed out. 

“That’s what it looks like,” agreed Emma. 

“But then why?” Ruby held up her hands in frustration. “Why would she move against you when she’s so unprepared?” 

“That’s exactly what was troubling me,” said Emma. “It didn’t seem to make any sense. She’s so completely unable to do what she plans and yet she’s so confident. Why? And why did my instincts tell me to do whatever I had to in order to keep the stone out of her hands?” 

“Well?” Ruby prodded. “Why?” 

Just then there came the sound of footsteps in the corridor. The door swung open and Snow appeared, rushing into the room followed by a young woman with long, dark hair and bloody scratches covering a face that wore a look of deep apprehension. 

Emma stiffened and threw up her hands, magic sparking and crackling at her fingertips. “What is _she_ doing here?” she snapped. 

“She’s—” began Snow, but Killian was already on his feet. 

“Who is she?” he demanded. 

“One of the women from the forest,” said Emma, and before the words were even fully out of her mouth, the room whirled in a blur of motion. August leapt from his chair as his eyes flared red and his fangs extended. Ruby and Graham’s bodies twisted, fur sprouting from their skin and claws from their fingers, faces elongating into snouts lined with sharp and dripping teeth. Killian drew his sword so fast it was a blur to David’s eyes as he swung it at the woman, stopping a hair’s breadth from her neck. Even Victor stood tense and ready, fingering a razor-honed scalpel he’d retrieved from the goddess knew where, as madness sparked in his eyes. 

“ _Stop_ it,” Snow cried, whirling around as she tried to defend against everyone at once. “She’s here as a friend.” 

“She tried to kill me!” snarled Emma, and Killian pressed the edge of his sword against the woman’s skin. She gasped and blinked as a small line of blood appeared beneath it. 

“I—I didn’t,” she stuttered. “I did my best to save you.” 

“That’s not what it sounded like from where I was standing,” retorted Emma. “Or from where I’d been flung on the ground, to be more precise.” 

“You don’t know my mother.” The woman’s tone, despite the sword at her throat and the snarling wolves and the mad scientist, the witch and the freaking vampire, was dry and heavy with irony, and David found himself impressed despite himself by her aplomb. “It’s… unwise to act directly against her,” she continued. “But she can be influenced by suggestion.” 

David could see the gears begin to turn behind Emma’s eyes as she regarded the woman with a probing stare.

“Killian,” she said quietly, and with no more instruction than this her Guardian lowered his sword, though he remained, David noticed, tense and alert. 

“Stand down, chaps,” he instructed. 

In a flash August’s eyes were blue again and his teeth a more expected length. Ruby and August shifted back to their usual forms, and Victor—well, he still looked mad, but at least he put his scalpel away. 

Emma was frowning thoughtfully at the woman. “Snow,” she said. “Why did you bring her here?” 

“She’s my kin,” replied Snow. “Look.” 

She pulled back the sleeve of her jacket to reveal the image of a tree brach curling around her wrist. David had seen the branch before, many times, but had always taken it for a tattoo. Now, though, he watched as it began to move, to wave as though caught in a summer’s breeze, and a bird appeared from out of nowhere to perch upon it. The woman pulled up her own sleeve to reveal the same branch and a very similar bird, and when the two women held their wrists together their branches intertwined and the birds began to sing. 

“ _Llwyth daear_ ,” said Emma. “Earth tribe. I suppose I should have seen that.” 

“You had other things on your mind,” said Snow. “But I saw it right away. Regina is my uncle’s daughter. My uncle who left the tribe when he fell in love with a human woman. We never heard from him again.” 

“He died,” said the woman—Regina—shortly. 

“Oh.” Snow’s fingers reached out to curl around Regina’s. “I’m sorry.” 

Regina smiled. “Thank you.” 

“Well this is a touching reunion,” drawled August. “But it doesn’t explain why you brought her back here.” 

“For the information, of course,” said Emma, fixing Regina with a pointed look. “She’s here to tell us all about her mother. Aren’t you, Regina.” 

Regina nodded. “I am.” 

— 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **‘Tis the end!** Finally! I am sorry this took so long, but I could not get my mind to focus on this chapter, for weeks and weeks and weeks. Thank you all for both your patience and your willingness to stick with me all the way to the end of this decidedly weird story.

The forest was dark, a deep, impenetrable blackness unlike anything Regina had ever known, a bold and mocking defiance of the golden glow of the moon hanging low above the treetops. The moonlight gilded the forest shadows as it would solid objects, caressing their curves and edges, its bright contrast only deepening the darkness within. Every instinct Regina possessed howled at her to flee and yet she walked steadily and at a measured pace, giving no outward sign of her unease as she made her way through the trees—even as their branches hissed and snapped at her as she passed and vines slithered up from the ground to wrap around her ankles and and tug at her clothing with their thorns. 

Regina ignored all of this, her head held high and chin tilted in a show of haughty insouciance she desperately wished to feel. This was her moment of triumph and she really ought to be enjoying it more. She should _revel_ in it, but instead she felt nothing but a churning apprehension deep in her gut. 

At length she arrived at her destination—the clearing that still held their tools and copies of the fae histories, along with the cage of branches, roots, and vines that contained her mother and sister. Regina took a moment to look carefully around the clearing then lifted her hand and murmured an incantation. The cage rent itself as though sliced by a sword, sending Cora and Zelena tumbling to the ground, stunned and momentarily immobilised, their limbs limp and useless from being bound for hours. 

They lay groaning faintly on the damp and upturned soil until Zelena dragged herself to her hands and knees and lashed out with a burst of magic. “ _Traitor_ ,” she hissed, flinging a bolt of sizzling green at her sister. 

Regina deflected it with a casual flick of her wrist. Zelena’s eyes bugged as she watched her magic fizzle to nothing in the deep darkness and then her fury _exploded_. With a howl she scrambled to her feet, teeth bared, and gathered her magic again. 

“How _dare_ you,” she hissed, raising her hands, green light crackling between her fingertips.

“Zelena.” Cora’s voice was calm, measured, and glacially cold. “This is not the time.” 

“Moth _er_ ,” Zelena whined, “she be _trayed_ us!” 

“Did she?” replied Cora, fixing Regina with a piercing stare. “I think not.” 

Regina smiled and waved her hand again, and from out of the stygian shadows a figure stumbled, both bound and propelled by cords of Regina’s magic. 

“Ah,” said Cora with satisfaction. “The fae princess, in our hands again.” 

“Not only that.” Regina withdrew a small object from her pocket and held it up for all to see. “She has the dark magic.” 

“ _No!_ ” cried Emma, her eyes flashing fury as she struggled against her magical bindings. Zelena looked at her sharply as Cora’s mouth fell open in awe. 

“Is this it?” she breathed, taking the object from Regina and stroking it with trembling fingers. “Is this truly it?” 

“It is,” Regina confirmed. “They call it the tywyll stone.” 

Cora held out the stone to Zelena. “Daughter?” 

Zelena took it and gave it a skeptical look. “Are you _sure_ this is it, Regina? The most powerful dark object in the world? It looks like a cheap hippie trinket.” 

“Why, Sis,” replied Regina silkily. “Can’t you sense its power?” 

Zelena’s expression turned sullen. “It does appear to contain a great deal of power, Mother,” she said. “More magic than I’ve ever felt in one object before. Far more.” 

Regina grinned smugly. 

“It just doesn’t _look_ like much,” Zelena snapped. 

“A perfect disguise, then,” purred Cora. “Excellent.” Her smile was ice and razors. “It seems you’ve done well, Regina, despite your constant whining.” 

Regina preened beneath her mother’s approving gaze as Emma struggled harder against her restraints. “It was easy,” she gloated. “They were _so_ eager to believe me.” 

~

_“For all my life my mother has been obsessed with my magic.”_

_Regina sat hunched in an armchair near the fire in the common room, a steaming cup of tea clutched in her hand. Behind her was a mirror, a tall one set with rippled glass and framed by slender, twisting vines twined together to form a series of knots. It was Harriet who had brought it into the common room, carried in vines of her own. David tried not to stare as she adjusted the mirror so all in the room could see it then curled herself around Emma’s chair as they sat and listened to the dark-haired woman’s story. He wondered how Harriet had managed, being cooped up in Emma’s dorm room for so long, and felt a wave of guilt for being the cause of her confinement. One of her fronds hovered near his knee and he offered it a tentative stroke. It curled welcomingly around his fingers. David smiled, making a mental note to find a way to make it up to her._

_With the smile still on his face he returned his attention to Regina. As she spoke the glass in the mirror had turned cloudy, and when she now paused to gather her words the clouds resolved into the image of a woman, cold and terribly beautiful, and with a smile that sent a shiver down his spine. Was_ this _Regina’s mother?_

_“She discovered my powers early,” Regina continued after a bracing gulp of tea. “As soon as they manifested. It’s like she was—waiting for them to appear.”_

_“How early is early?” Emma asked._

_“I was… four? I think?”_

_Emma nodded. “That seems about right.”_

_“It was later in my sister,” said Regina. “I don’t think hers showed until after mine did, though she’s almost three years older.” Her lip curled. “One of the many things she holds against me.”_

_Snow bristled. “It’s hardly your fault!”_

_“Zelena doesn’t see it that way,” sighed Regina. “She’s always seen us as being in competition with each other. In everything, not just magic.”_

_“Is Zelena Mountain Tribe by any chance?” asked Emma._

_“I don’t actually know,” Regina replied. “I don’t think even Mother does. She doesn’t like to talk about Zelena’s father.”_

_The image in the mirror grew cloudy again and then shifted, resolving into the same woman as before though far younger, deep in conversation with a tall and slender red-haired man. They all watched as she took his hand and pressed it low against her belly, and they all saw comprehension dawn in his eyes. For an awful moment the mirror focused on his face, frozen in utter horror, and then the image faded._

_“Mountain tribe,” confirmed Emma grimly. “Unyielding and slow to forgive. Vengeful.”_

_“That sounds like Zelena.” Regina turned her attention from the mirror with a grimace. “Her father left before she was born and she’s never forgiven me for it.”_

_“But—_ that’s _not your fault either!” Snow sputtered in indignation and appeared to have far more to say on the subject, but Emma silenced her with a look._

_“Her father left,” she said softly, “but yours stayed.”_

_“Yes.” Regina’s voice was nearly a whisper. “Though I’ve never understood why. My mother never loved him and I know he didn’t love her. I have no idea what kept him with her for so long, but she must have had some sort of hold over him. He gave in to nearly every demand she made, without even a protest.”_

_“_ Nearly _every demand?” echoed Emma._

_Regina nodded. “All except one. He wouldn’t let her become part of his tribe. Not when she begged, not even when she threatened. That was the one thing she most wanted, her ultimate goal, but no matter what she did to try to force his hand he always refused. He cut off all contact with his kin rather than allow her any foothold among them, and he never budged on that, no matter how many tricks Mother tried to get him to change his mind. It was a constant battle between them and I was always so afraid…” Regina swallowed hard. “Every morning I expected to wake up and find him gone, but he was always there, ready to take another day of her abuse. I wish I knew why he stayed.”_

_The clouds in the mirror swirled into the image of a man, short and round and with the same tree branch marking his daughter bore, just visible beneath the cuff of his shirt. He stood in the doorway of a darkened room, leaning against the jamb and gazing into it with an adoring expression. The image shifted to reveal the object of his gaze—a young girl asleep in a bed, her dark hair messy on the pillow._

_“He stayed for you,” said Emma. “He adored you. He couldn’t bring you to the tribe because that would give your mother the right to follow and claim a place among them as your kin. He couldn’t let that happen but also he couldn’t bear to leave you. He stayed with her for you.”_

_“Oh!” Regina gasped as she stared into the mirror, blinking hard against the tears in her eyes. She stared until the image faded, then she gave a sniff, wiped her cheeks with the cuff of her jacket and continued. “My father was the only source of comfort in my life,” she said hoarsely. “But then one morning my worst nightmare came true. I woke up and he was dead… Mother said he had been sick for a long time and had hidden it from me, but I knew, I_ knew _she had killed him. That was the day she told us her plans for taking control of the Black Fairy’s magic.”_

_At these words a heavy silence fell on the room. Each face was grim, David saw, and each was shaken. Even Killian. Even Emma._

_“Us?” asked Snow, in a small voice. “Who else?”_

_“Just me and Zelena. I lost my father, met my half-sister, and learned of my mother’s plan to take over the world, all in the same day.” She gave a slightly hysterical laugh._

_“_ Met _your half sister?” Snow demanded. “Didn’t you know her already?”_

_Regina shook her head. “Apparently when she met my father, Mother left Zelena with some distant relatives and pretended that she had no children. She never told me I had a sister, though it seems she visited Zelena regularly and told her all about me. So on the day my father died, before I’d even had a chance to mourn, Zelena appeared, hating me before we’d even met, knowing all about Mother’s plan and fully on board with it. Both of them just expecting me to fall into line and go along with it. And since that day I haven’t known which way to turn.”_

_Regina looked up at Emma, desperation in every line of her body. “What they want to do is madness,” she whispered. “I’ve tried so hard to tell them but they won’t listen to anything I say. They think they’re the only ones to read the fae histories and work out the clues about the Black Fairy’s magic. Like no one else in four thousand years has ever picked up on them.” She gave a haughty sniff. “But my father showed me the truth.”_

_Emma’s eyes narrowed. “He showed you your visions?”_

_Regina gulped hard then nodded. “I’ve never told anyone that before. He swore me to secrecy. He said the consequences of Mother finding out would be unthinkable.”_

_“What did you see?” asked Snow._

_“The history of our tribe in the war against the Black Fairy. The writing of the Covenants. Enough to understand Mother would never succeed in her goal of finding the Black Fairy’s magic and using it for herself, though nothing about where that magic was actually kept.”_

_“Almost no one sees that,” Snow told her reassuringly. “None of us had any idea it was with Emma until Killian showed us the tywyll stone.”_

_Regina gasped and gaped at Emma, wide-eyed. “So it really_ is _you,” she breathed._

_“Yes,” said Emma slowly. “Didn’t you know?”_

_“No.” Regina’s mouth thinned. “Mother has no idea what she’s looking for or who has it. But everyone knows that Andersen Hall is where the fae students live”—David gave a start and felt his cheeks go pink—“and so she took a chance that one of you would either have it or know where to find it.” Her mouth curled in a small smile. “I have to admit it was gratifying to see you defeat her so easily, though I doubt she’ll learn any lessons from that.”_

_Emma’s face wore a thoughtful expression. “But why now?” she asked. “And why this move? Given that your mother is so badly prepared and so ignorant, why is she taking such a risk on drastic action_ now _, when she could bide her time and learn more before acting?”_

_Regina gave her a sharp look. “Oh I think you know the reason._ Princess _.”_

_Emma smiled. “The moon.”_

_Regina nodded. “The moon.”_

~

“I told them you had no magic and they laughed at you,” Regina informed her mother. “They thought it was hilarious, the foolish human attempting what no fae has been able to do in thousands of years.” 

Cora’s jaw tightened and her eyes flashed fury. “They will rue the day they underestimated me,” she hissed. 

“Of course they will,” Regina agreed. “If anyone was ever going to rue anything, that would be it.” Zelena gave her a sharp look, but she met her sister’s suspicious eyes with cool composure. 

“Did she tell you anything more about what is required? Any fae secrets or hidden dangers?” Cora demanded. 

“No.” Regina shook her head decisively. “Everything we need to know is in the histories. The ritual as we planned it will release the magic from the stone. She’s basically confirmed it.” 

Cora’s lip curled triumphantly. “And what have you to say to that, _Princess?_ ” she spat. “About a lowly human so easily discovering your secrets?” 

“Curse you,” snarled Emma, struggling frantically against her bonds. “Curse all of you. But especially _you_ , Regina. I _trusted_ you. I was going to _help_ you! Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” 

Regina’s eyes made an exasperated sort of half-roll and she huffed a sigh before fixing the smug expression back on her face. Zelena’s eyes narrowed. Cora cackled. 

“It’s a hard lesson you’ve learned,” she gloated. “The first of many hard lessons the fae will learn when I have control of the dark magic! Oh yes, then you’ll see! Then you will know what it’s like to be powerless! Then you will give me what I deserve!” 

Emma’s expression shifted from fury to fear. “Stop this!” she pleaded. “I’m begging you! Don’t release that magic! You don’t know what you’re doing!” 

“That’s where you’re wrong, _Your Highness_ ,” spat Cora. “You heard Regina. We’ve studied the histories. We know your secrets. And now we will break open this stone and the dark magic will be released!” 

She turned to her elder daughter. “Zelena, you know what to do.” 

“Mother, are you sure?” Zelena asked. “I think they might be—”

“ _Do_ it!” Cora snapped. 

“Please!” cried Emma again, raising her voice to be heard over the rustlings and whisperings emanating from the forest around them, growing steadily louder as Zelena reluctantly began the ritual to remove the magic from the stone. 

“Do you hear that?” Cora crowed. “That is the sound of this forest greeting its new master!” 

Zelena cupped the stone in her palms and held it up above her head to catch a slender shaft of moonlight that had fought its way through the dense dark of the forest. She began murmuring low under her breath as the glow of the moonlight met the shimmer of the stone to shine more brightly than either could alone. She continued to murmur as Emma struggled and Cora quivered with eager triumph. A buzzing noise filled the clearing, low at first but slowly rising, filling their ears with the sound of a hundred bees and then a thousand, their bodies vibrating in concert with the sound until the air was rent with an earsplitting _crack—_ and then silence. 

Zelena cried out and dropped the stone, stumbling backwards and landing hard against a tree trunk, her eyes wild and fixed on the spot where it had fallen. Where now an oily rope of magic began to rise up, coiling through the air, as black as the forest shadows but distinct from them in a most unnatural way, a way that would turn the most stalwart stomach. 

“At last!” Cora shrieked. “At last! After all these years it is free! It is _mine!_ ”

“Free it may be but yours it is definitely not,” said a voice in her ear, and Cora turned to see Emma, unbound by magic and smiling a smile that froze her blood.

“Wh—what?” she gasped. 

Emma gave her head a small, pitying shake. “I warned you not to release that magic.” 

~

_“As I was saying before,” said Emma, “it’s the timing. She_ has _to act now because she might not get another chance. Because of that.” She pointed at the window to the left of the fireplace. A tall window in the arched Gothic style as all Andersen windows were, within which the heavy golden moon was perfectly framed._

_“The full moon!” exclaimed Ruby._

_“Exactly.” Emma nodded. “But it’s not just any moon. Belle!” she called out, and the ghost resolved in front of the fireplace. “Why don’t you explain this part.”_

_Belle’s faint image solidified, though the flames of the fire behind her were still perceptible through her form. “Right,” she said, looking a bit nervous at the number and intensity of the eyes staring at her. “So as you all know, tonight is Calan Gaeaf.” Every head but David’s nodded._

_“Um—” David cleared his throat. “Sorry, but—I don’t?”_

_“Oh, right, sorry.” Belle gave him an apologetic smile. “Calan Gaeaf is the traditional first day of winter in fae culture. It’s the one day of the year when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest, when spirits roam abroad, and of course when magic is at its most potent and most accessible.”_

_“So, Halloween,” said David._

_Ruby gasped and Graham growled. Victor stood straight and reached for his scalpel, and August’s eyes flashed red. Emma hissed and Killian’s jaw went hard as iron. Belle looked horrified, Snow sorrowful. Even Regina fixed him with an icy glare._

_“You were raised among humans, mate,” said Killian tightly, “and taught their ways, and so we’ll let that slide. This one time.” He swept the room with a glare and the others slowly relaxed. “But that is one word that must never be spoken in the presence of fae. It’s incredibly insulting.”_

_“I—” David began, but he had no idea what to say.  
_

_Emma gave him a small smile, though temper still flashed in her eyes. “It’s an appropriation of our culture,” she explained. “Misrepresentation of it. Vampires, werewolves, witches, fairies—these are human inventions intended to erase the fae from their culture. They ignore what we are, our nature and our history, and turn us into cutesy children’s stories or simplistic monsters ultimately defeated by human ‘heroes’.”_

_“Though they’re more than happy to use our magic when it suits them,” Victor added, for once without a hint of mockery in his voice. “Human medicine and science, even their technology either makes use of fae magic or is based on it. But we’re never given any credit for our contributions.”_

_“And more and more we’re marginalised in the human world,” added Snow. “We either have to hide what we are so we can live peacefully among you, or live far away from human settlements. Something that’s become next to impossible the more your cities grow.”_

_“It’s why we choose to live here,” said Graham. “Here at Andersen we can at least be ourselves, and have each other for company. We have to out ourselves of course—”_

_“Though_ some _of us never bothered to do much hiding,” retorted Ruby with a glare at August, who simply shrugged and muttered something about riding the wave of the zeitgeist._

_“We have to out ourselves,” continued Graham loudly, “and some of the other students are scared of us—”_

_“Or just flat out don’t believe in us,” said Snow._

_“Or basically pretend we don’t exist,” said Ruby._

_“—but it’s worth it, to have this place for ourselves,” concluded Graham._

_“Although we do occasionally have to, um,_ encourage _certain RAs to switch to other dorms,” said Emma._

_“Walsh?” whispered David, and a mutter went up around the room._

_“That asshole,” sneered August. “He was the worst of them all.”_

_“You’re one of us,” said Emma, “even if you didn’t know you were until this morning. We were so exited when Killian recognised you.”_

_“Though we didn’t think it would take_ quite _so long for you to pick up on all the hints we’ve been dropping,” said Ruby._

_“Yeah, we haven’t exactly been subtle, David,” Snow teased._

_“Look you guys, when my grandmother put a spell on someone, she put a_ spell _on them,” said Emma. “It’s not his fault.”_

_“It might be a_ little _bit his fault,” said Killian with a smirk._

_Snow reached out and patted David’s hand. “It’s not his fault he didn’t know about the H-word, though,” she said._

_“That’s true,” Killian conceded, and they all nodded._

_“I’m sorry I said it, though.” David’s chest was tight as he looked around the room and made eye contact with each of them, one by one. “I won’t again.”_

_The lingering tension in the room drained away and they all visibly relaxed. Emma gave Belle a nod and indicated for her to continue._

_“So Calan Gaeaf is always a particularly powerful magical time,” Belle said. “And this year even more so. This year Calan Gaeaf coincides with a blue moon—that’s when there’s a second full moon within one calendar month,” she explained before David could ask. “A full moon on that day is rare enough, but a blue moon is far rarer. And a blue moon that is also the Hunter’s moon, falling on the one day of the year when dark powers are easiest to access? Well, that’s—”_

_“The perfect time for an attempt to release the Black Fairy’s magic,” said Emma. “Really the only time that a human woman and her amateur daughters would have any hope of managing it. Er, no offence,” she said to Regina, who had bristled at the word ‘amateur.’_

_“None taken,” said Regina stiffly. “It is true we haven’t had the benefit of the education you’ve had.”_

_Emma flushed. “No, I guess you haven’t,” she acknowledged. “Sorry.”_

_“But—do they have any hope of managing it?” asked Snow. “I mean, really?”_

_“They shouldn’t,” Emma replied. “They don’t have the knowledge or the authority. They don’t even know that they_ need _authority. But a blue Hunter’s Moon on Calan Gaeaf makes the situation very different. The mother may have no magic but Regina and, er—”_

_“Zelena.”_

_“—Regina and Zelena are powerful, despite their lack of training. It’s actually just their kind of raw, untapped power that Calan Gaeaf makes stronger. If they try to force the magic from the stone, just brute power applied like a sledgehammer… well, it might work. It has a good chance of working, in fact.”_

_The room fell silent again, silence that David felt weigh on his shoulders and press the air from his chest. “So what are we going to_ do? _” he burst out._

_Emma smiled, a smile that spread slowly across her face and sharpened the green of her eyes. A smile that if you saw it approaching you on along a darkened path would send you hurrying back the way you came, trying desperately not to look like you were hurrying. A smile that took no prisoners._

_“We’re going to let it work,” she said._

~

“I warned you,” said Emma now, eyes glowing that same sharp green beneath the golden moonlight. 

“But what—h-how?” stuttered Cora. “Regina? You—you let her go?” 

“I never had her,” said Regina coolly. Cora turned to stare at her daughter and found Regina ready with magical bonds, real ones this time, which she wrapped securely around Cora to hold her in place.

“How—how _dare_ you!” Cora hissed, struggling vainly against the restraints. 

“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Regina. “I truly am. Sorry that you spent your life being envious of others and pursuing something you could never have. But this plan of yours? It was never going to work, and at least now you won’t destroy yourself and us too.” 

“But it did, it did work!” Cora cried. “I found the dark magic! _I_ released it!” 

“You did,” Regina conceded. “But you could never have controlled it. Look at it!” 

The rope of dark magic was still rising from the broken stone, splitting apart and branching out, filling the clearing, hissing and spitting as it swirled around them, dodging Zelena’s increasingly furious and haphazard attempts to corral it. 

“You unleashed powerful dark magic with no consideration for the consequences, and were it not for your daughter’s good sense you would have been its first victim,” said Emma coldly. “Instead, we’re going to save you from it. Oh no”—she held up her hand as Cora moved to speak—“no need to thank us.”

Cora gave a furious huff—though there was dawning horror on her face as she watched the magic swirl around them—and Emma turned to Regina with a nod. “It’s time,” she said. 

Regina squared her shoulders. “I’m ready.” 

Emma began muttering under her breath as she raised her hands high and then flung them downwards, as though to embed a a dagger in the ground. Puffs of silver smoke burst up from the earth, a circle of them around the clearing. The puffs appeared to startle the darkness; its oily tendrils recoiled when they appeared and when the last wisps of smoke whirled away into the night Killian was there, lip curled in a snarl and sword drawn… Snow with her bow at the ready… David behind her, sword in hand and trying to look like he knew what to do with it… Ruby in wolf form snapping her jaws… Graham in the shape of a panther, sleek and deadly and near-invisible in the shadows… August flickering in and out of vision, fangs extended and eyes glowing… Victor with several steaming beakers at his feet and a mad gleam in his eyes. 

Cora’s own eyes were wild with fear but she made one last attempt at bravado. “What, all this for me,” she scoffed, with a wheezing attempt at a laugh. 

“Oh, Mother.” Regina’s voice was thick with pity. “Do you still think this is about _you?_ ” 

Without warning the darkness lunged, snapping its thick and curling tendrils at the assembled fae like lashes of a bullwhip. They leapt into defence, slashing with swords and teeth and claws at the dark magic—all but Zelena, exhausted from her earlier struggles, who was caught up around the waist and roughly shaken. She shrieked with fury and with agony, tearing at the darkness that held her. Killian leapt forward, his sword describing a glittering arc in the moonlight as it sliced through the tendril to free her. Zelena fell to the ground in a heap, screaming as the dark magic still coiled around her sputtered and fizzled against her skin. Victor appeared at her side, faster than it would have seemed possible for him to move, armed with a smoking beaker. This smoke he wafted over Zelena’s writhing form and the darkness dissipated, slinking away from Zelena and leaving her panting and exhausted on the forest floor. 

Killian fisted a hand in the front of her coat and hauled her up, slamming her back against a tree. “You have a decision to make,” he snarled in her face, so close their noses were nearly touching. “Fight with us, or let the darkness swallow you whole.” 

“I’ll take my chances with the darkness,” Zelena spat. She clenched her fists and burst of magic exploded from her chest, knocking Victor off his feet and dropping him flat his back in the dirt. Killian, as all Guardians would be, was unaffected. 

“ _What!_ ” Zelena roared in fury and reared back for another attack. Killian raised an eyebrow. 

“I’d save my strength if I were you, love,” he said, stepping back to clear the way for the dark magic. “You’re going to need it.” 

The darkness howled as it wrapped once again around Zelena, tightly enough to muffle her screams, and Killian turned his attention back to the clearing. The dark tendrils were everywhere, whipping and writhing in their ancient fury, attacking through whatever opening they could, barely held at bay by the valiant efforts of his friends. At the centre of it all stood Emma, feet planted firmly and arms open, surrounded by an almost blinding glow of light. As he watched, a slender strand of darkness, deftly evading Ruby’s snapping jaws, made a lunge for her and Killian—though fully aware of Emma’s ability to defend her own self—dove in and cleft the tendril in two with his sword. He landed hard on his shoulder, carried the momentum of the fall into a forward roll and sprang back to his feet, whipping the sword up behind him, poised and ready once again to defend Emma to and with his dying breath, whether she bloody well liked it or not. 

~

Emma stood still and silent as chaos swirled around her. She forced herself not to heed it, to trust her friends and Killian to do what they had to do to hold the dark magic at bay until she was ready with her own. She closed her eyes and focused her mind, concentrated on the magic within and around her. Not on the darkness of the forest but on what surrounded it—the magic of the trees and the earth and the moon above. 

The darkness continued to attack on every front, spreading around her and reaching out, trying to touch her, to claim her. Killian stalked in a circle around her, his sword a blur as he sliced at the magic, while Victor flung the contents of his beakers, Snow shot her enchanted arrows, and Graham and Ruby ripped with teeth and claws. 

Emma saw none of it, heard none of it. She felt only the magic, rising up and coursing through her, pulled from the moon and all the plants and creatures of the forest. It filled her with its light and its power, and then she raised her hands to the sky and began to sing. 

David paused from where he was hacking away at the tendrils of magic—there hadn’t been time for Killian to do more than teach him a few basic sword-fighting moves before Emma called them to the forest, but he was doing the best he could with what he had—and turned to stare at her, his jaw dropping in awe. Her song he was astonished to discover he recognised; it was the one he had heard in his vision, sung by Emmas ancestor, Arianrhod, four thousand years before—the same language set to the same melody. And yet David, though he did not understand the words, could sense subtle alterations in pitch and phrasing that he began to realise had transformed the ancient tune into something very new indeed. 

Arianrhod had called the darkness to her and forced it to heed her will, imprisoned it in the tywyll stone for all eternity, or so she had intended. The darkness was angry now, restless from its long confinement and out for bloody vengeance—David could see that plainly in the way it fought and clawed to get to Emma—yet the song that Emma sang made no attempt to stifle or recapture it. Instead she appeared to be… letting it go? 

The dark tendrils froze as if in wonder, staring at Emma—if indeed magic could be said to stare—and then slowly, slowly, the thick black ropes began to soften and unfurl, uncoiling themselves into ever more slender strands… the merest wisps of magic by the end, wisps that whispered away on an unseen wind and vanished into the night. 

The final note of Emma’s song rang sweetly through the trees and through the shadows beneath them that no longer held any hint of menace. It lingered in the air and when at last it faded Emma opened her eyes and smiled. 

“It’s done,” she breathed, echoing again the words of her ancestor. “It’s done.” She drew a deep breath and released it in a sigh of profound relief—and then her knees went out from under her and she collapsed to the ground. Killian dropped his sword and leapt forward to catch her, cradling her gently in his arms as he lowered her to the forest floor. 

“Swan,” he said softly, then again more harshly as she tried to speak but couldn’t, as her eyelids fluttered shut again. “Swan!” Killian choked. “Emma… Emma, no, _no!_ ” He clutched her to his chest as her body went limp, shaking her gently and calling her name until Snow and David managed to pry him away.

Victor came forward and knelt beside Emma, the look on his face uncharacteristically solemn. He felt her forehead and her cheeks, then pressed his fingers to her wrist to take her pulse. 

“She’ll be okay,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Jones, listen to me. She’ll be okay.” 

Killian swallowed hard and nodded. “She’ll be okay,” he repeated faintly. “But—will she? You’re certain?” 

“She’s exhausted,” said Victor. “Drained of almost all her strength. She can survive that but she needs rest and restorative potions. We have to get her back to the hall, as soon as possible. There’s no time to lose.” 

“How—” Killian’s voice broke “— _how_ can we get her back in time, it’s at least an hour’s walk and that’s without having to carry her—” 

“I can take her.” 

They all turned to Regina, who flushed under their scrutiny. “I can take her,” she repeated. “I can transport her by magic, the way she did with you.” 

“Are you sure?” Snow asked. “Have you ever done that before?” 

“No, but I saw what Emma did and I’m a fast learner.” Regina’s eyes were terrified but her jaw set with determination. “I can do it.” 

“You’ll have to take me too,” said Victor. “I know what potions to give her, and where she keeps her supplies.” 

“O-okay.” Regina gulped. “Okay. I can do that.” 

Killian shook off Snow and David and sank to his knees next to Emma’s prone form. Gently and with trembling fingers he tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can, my love,” he murmured. “Until then you fight, do you hear me, Swan? Fight, and don’t give up.” His voice broke again and he brushed his fingertips over her cheek. 

“I love you,” he whispered, almost too softly to be heard, then pressed a kiss to her forehead and stood swiftly, striding over to where he had dropped his sword. “We’ll take care of everything here,” he said, picking it up and sheathing it at his hip with brusque, determined movements, “and meet you back at the hall.” 

Regina nodded. She inhaled deeply then raised her hand, muttered some words under her breath, and flung her hands towards the ground. Three puffs of dark red smoke rose up, and when they dissipated she, Victor, and Emma were gone. 

~

It wasn’t until three hours later that the rest of them finally arrived back at Andersen. The dark magic was gone from the clearing—or not _gone_ , not _really_ , not _as such_ , Snow had attempted to explain. It was more that it had been returned… to the plants and the soil and the air itself, from which the Black Fairy had stolen it all those centuries ago. 

“It’s back where it belongs,” Snow said. “It won’t harm us anymore.” 

But there was still Cora to contend with, who despite still being bound in her daughter’s magic did not, as they say, come quietly. 

Nor did Zelena, once they found her—not torn apart by the darkness as Killian had feared but huddled in a hollow log, eyes burning with madness and snapping at anyone who attempted to approach her. Her magic crackled wildly from her fingertips and sparks of it skittered across her skin and between that and the shrieking none of them were able to get near her. 

In the end they managed to lasso her with a vine, identified by Snow as one that would be strong enough to hold both Zelena and her magic. “I don’t have magic of my own like Emma does, but I do have a certain touch with birds and plants,” Snow explained, as a flock of forest birds assisted them in wrapping the vine around and around Zelena, securing it with strong knots until she was thoroughly immobilised. 

From there, they just had to drag her and Cora back to the dorm. 

Once the two women were locked in the dungeon (“The _what now?_ ” David almost hollered, to which Killian replied with a smirk “Did you really think there wouldn’t be dungeons, mate?”) the group made their way back to the common room, to fall gracelessly onto the sofas and chairs and think wistful thoughts about hot things to drink.

David could see the tension in Killian’s body, the set of his shoulders and jaw drawing tighter the closer they got to Emma’s room, the strain of the anxiety and fear he’d been holding at bay since she had collapsed in his arms. He strode straight past the common room to her door and swallowed hard before giving a tentative knock. 

Victor opened it and draped himself against its jamb. “You took your time,” he snarked, but Killian was in no mood for verbal sparring. 

“How is she?” he demanded. “Is she okay?” 

“She’s fine. Just as I said she’d be.” 

“Can—” Killian cleared his throat. “Can I see her?” 

“Well,” Victor smirked, “That depends on—”

His words were cut off by a blur of green—Harriet’s vine, wrapping around his neck and giving it a squeeze, a thorny leaf hovering with intent just above his head. 

“Yes, yes, go,” Victor rasped, “go see her!” Harriet released him and he clutched at his neck, gasping for air as Killian elbowed him out of the way and hurried into the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

Victor retreated into the common room, still rubbing his neck. “She’s fine,” he repeated, meeting the glares of his assembled dorm-mates with a shrug. He cleared his throat. “Regina transported us perfectly and I was able to get her the potions in more than enough time. She’s weak and needs rest but she’ll be fine.” He settled himself into an armchair and gave Snow an expectant look. “You know what would really hit the spot right about now?” he remarked, apropos of nothing. “A nice cup of your whisky apple tea.” 

Snow rolled her eyes but she made the tea—for all of them, and David had to admit that it really did hit the spot. It was sharp and sweet and soothing, and it warmed him to the tips of his fingers and toes.

Snow settled down next to him with her own steaming cup, and he regarded her hesitantly as she sipped. “Um,” he said, after a rather long silence, “this may be a dumb question, but—no, scratch that, it’s _definitely_ a dumb question but I’m going to ask it anyway.” 

Snow looked amused. “What is it?” 

“Couldn’t Killian—back in the forest, you know—couldn’t he have just, er, kissed Emma? To make her better? Or is that a human idea?” 

“True Love’s Kiss?” replied Snow. “No, that’s a real thing. But it’s really just for magical afflictions and Emma wasn’t cursed or anything, she was just exhausted. Using that much magic takes a lot out of a person.” 

“It killed her ancestor,” said David quietly. 

“Yes.” Snow smiled at him, soft and full of empathy. “But fae healing has advanced a lot since then, and Emma knows her limits. I know it was scary back there, her fainting like that, but she’s smart enough to know how much magic she can handle before it’s too much.” 

“So she’s really going to be okay?” 

“Oh yeah, I’m sure she will.” Snow smirked. “Victor’s bedside manner may leave a lot to be desired, but he’s actually a pretty skilled healer. And Emma’s potions are second to none.” 

David shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s been less than twenty-four hours since—well, since all this,” he said, waving his hand to encompass the room at large. “I’m still not certain it isn’t all just a very weird dream.” 

Snow laughed. “Sounds like someone could use another cup of tea,” she teased. “But in all seriousness I imagine it will be a tough adjustment for you. It can’t be easy finding out that everything you thought was true isn’t quite, and what you are is very different to what you thought you were.” 

“Er, yeah,” chuckled David. “That.” 

“You know,” said Snow, dropping her eyes to her lap, where her fingers twisted nervously around her teacup. “If you ever need someone to talk to about it, you can always come to me. Anything you need, I—I’m here. Just ask.” 

David swallowed hard and nodded. “We could start with that tea,” he said gruffly. 

Snow smiled. “Tea it is.” 

~

David Nolan was no longer surprised by people’s reactions when they learned he was the Resident Assistant for H.C. Andersen Hall at Misthaven University. If anything, he thought, they should be far, far more afraid than they were. If they knew the things he did, if they had any inkling of the secrets the hall contained… well, they would do a lot more than just twitch nervously at the mention of its name. 

A _lot_ more. 

“Just a Halloween prank gone a bit too far,” he stated firmly when the Chancellor summoned him to his office, to inquire hesitantly and in a quavering voice if David had any idea what had caused the peculiar conflagration of smoke and light that other students had reported as coming from the forest in the early hours of November the first. “Shenanigans. You more than anyone, sir, must know how crazy students can get on Halloween.” 

“Er—yes.” The Chancellor fiddled with his pen, his eyes darting between David’s face and the wall just over his left shoulder. David gave him a bland smile. “Hallow-halloween. Yes. Shenanigans. Indeed. That would appear to be a perfectly plausible, um, explanation. Er, thank you for coming in, Mr Nolan.” 

“No problem,” said David jovially. “If there’s anything else I can do for you just let me know.” 

The Chancellor nodded and David stood to go. His had was on the doorknob when the Chancellor spoke again. 

“Er—Mr Nolan?” 

David turned. “Yes?” 

“About the, um, the forest. You haven’t happened to notice anything, erm, different about it? Since, ah, since Halloween?” 

David shook his head, his expression guileless. “No, sir, I can’t say that I have. Why? Have you?” 

“Ah, no, um, just, er, a report or, ah, two,” stuttered the Chancellor. “But they must have been, um, mistaken… thank you again for, ah, coming in…” 

“Of course.” With another bland smile and a nod David left the office. 

In actual fact, he reflected as he strolled home through the bright and frosty November morning, the forest _had_ changed, and quite a lot. Gone was the sense of eerie menace that had always lurked among its grey-green trees, the creeping tension that hovered between the shoulder blades of anyone who ventured too far into its depths. The trees stood taller now, and straighter, their leaves rustling in playful breezes and dappled with the bright yellows, reds, and oranges of autumn. The birds who nested in their branches sang happier songs and Emma predicted that come springtime there would even be flowers venturing to poke their colourful heads above the soil. 

“Balance,” she’d replied with a shrug when he asked her how it could be that releasing dark magic back into the world actually made that world lighter. “Everything needs a balance of light and dark. The Black Fairy took away the dark magic and the light couldn’t balance without it, so it retreated, hid away to protect itself, and left the forest a sort of empty, dead place in its absence. So by restoring the dark we also brought back the light.” 

“To balance it,” David murmured, nodding. He gave Emma an appraising look. “Did you _know_ that’s what would happen?” 

“I was _almost_ certain,” she replied with a grin. “My ancestors thought the darkness needed to be contained so it could be guarded—so no one could ever use it for their own ends again. I was raised to believe that was the only way to protect the world and I _did_ believe it, until—well, until I admitted to myself that I was in love with Killian. That forced me to take a hard look the things I’d been taught, and for the first time to wonder _why?_ _Why_ couldn’t Guardians and their charges be together? Where was the harm in it? And once I started questioning the so-called wisdom of the ancestors, I found I couldn’t stop.” Her mouth twisted in a wry expression. “Turns out challenging authority is addictive, and so is that word ‘why.’ _Why_ did we shroud the tywyll stone in such secrecy? _Why_ did we even have to have the tywyll stone at all? Then when Cora came along with her plan to release the magic, I thought well, why _not?_ Calan Gaeaf and the blue moon made it possible for her to release it but she would never be able to control it—no one could. The Black Fairy was more powerful than any fae before or since, and it’s unlikely anyone will ever again be able to replicate her magic. So, I thought, why not just let the darkness go? Put it back where it came from, where it’s _needed_. And if ever another person comes along and tries to harness it the way she did, well, this time we’ll know how to handle them.” 

David shook his head. “But you were only _almost_ certain that would work?” he teased. 

Emma laughed. “Nothing’s ever _completely_ certain when it comes to magic,” she replied. “I was as sure as I could be.” 

They were silent for a moment before David spoke again. “There’s one more thing I’d like to ask, if that’s okay,” he said. 

Emma’s eyes twinkled. “Only one?” 

“Well—yeah, okay I have a _lot_ of questions, but only one for now.” 

“Hit me.” 

David chose his words with care. “Killian—he told me, after I woke up from my second round of visions, that H.C. Andersen wasn’t the original name of this building. That it was renamed in order to, er, erase the fae from the university’s history.” 

“That’s correct,” said Emma. “Is that your question?” 

“No. I was just wondering… what was the original name?” 

Emma smirked. “ _Prifysgol y Tragwyddol a'r Anweledig_ ,” she replied. 

“Er— _what?_ ” 

She laughed. “University of the Eternal and Unseen,” she translated. “It was built to be a place where fae magic and human science could come together. To enhance each other, and to build great things in harmonious collaboration. Or that was the idea, at least.” 

“I’m sorry that’s not how it turned out,” said David. 

“Eh.” Emma shrugged. “Eternity is a long time, and trends come and go. Even social ones like fae-human relations and attitudes to magic. Who’s to say that some day this building might not be known by that name again, and serve out the purpose for which it was intended?” 

David recalled another thing Killian had told him, and the penny dropped. “That’s what you and Killian are planning, isn’t it?” he said. “To bring fae culture out of the past and into the twenty-first century. To forge something new. New ways to interact with humans, maybe?” 

“Well look at you, all clever with your deductions,” she teased. “You’re right, that is our plan. Time will tell if anything actually comes of it.” 

“Well, whatever comes I’m on your side,” declared David. “You know that, right? I mean, I may not have had the chance to be your official Guardian but I’ve always felt a sort of—well, like a _call_ almost. To keep you safe. And I want to help.” 

Emma smiled, a soft smile glowing with affection and pride. “Even my grandmother’s magic wasn’t strong enough to wipe the Guardian out of you completely,” she said. “You’re a good man, David Nolan. I’m glad you’ve found yourself again. And that you’ve found your way here to us, for now and for the future.” 

~

Later that evening they all came together around the fire in the common room, sharing spiced apple cider and hot tea and some crispy golden cookies that Emma called _cacennau enaid._ David sat on a sofa with Snow tucked against his side and observed the scene around him. 

Around a small table Victor and Graham sat, along with Regina—who would officially enrol at the university for the spring semester and in the meantime had elected to remain at Andersen, a circumstance into which the Chancellor had declined to probe too fully—all three deep in conversation about Victor’s latest experiments with electricity and anatomy. Ruby was near the fire chatting to a remarkably visible Belle and tossing the occasional barbed comment in the direction of August, who lounged in an armchair parrying her verbal blows with a cool nonchalance that David was certain must be at least 80% feigned. He knew by now that Ruby and August—in keeping with the werewolves and vampires of their human-tale counterparts—would never be friends. Nor would either one admit how much they both enjoyed their rivalry. 

Emma and Killian sat on the other sofa, curled together with his arm around her waist and her head tucked into his shoulder, their hands entwined and resting on Killian’s knee. His fingers tangled in the ends of her hair as he whispered in her ear, words too soft for any other to hear but ones that made her blush and snuggle deeper into his embrace. 

David smiled as he surveyed the room then gathered his courage and took Snow’s hand, twining their fingers as Emma and Killian’s were. She looked up at him in surprise, then a happy smile curved her lips and she relaxed against him, resting her cheek on his arm. 

David sighed in supreme contentment. Andersen Hall, he thought. Definitely the best gig on campus. 

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **A note about language:** All of the non-English words in this story, including the names of Emma’s ancestors and the other fae ancients, are Welsh, a language I do not speak. If there are any Welsh speakers out there in the fandom, _ymddiheuriadau dyfnaf,_ I did my best ❤️.


End file.
